The Dealey Plaza Counter-Intelligence Operation - Phase One

THE DEALEY PLAZA COUNTER-INTELLIGENCE OPERATION – PHASE ONE         

   

Covert Operation is defined as: “An operation that is so planned and executed as to conceal the identity or permit plausible denial by the sponsor. A covert operation differs from a clandestine operation in that emphasis is placed on concealment of the identity of the sponsor rather than on concealment of the operation.”

Since the murder of the president in broad daylight could not be a concealed clandestine operation, it was a successfully planned and executed covert operation as it did conceal the identity of the sponsors, at least until now, as we figure it out.

President Kennedy once said that “problems created by men can be solved by men,” and since his murder was perpetrated by men, even though it was meant to deceive, it is a crime that can be solved by men. In disregarding the naysayers who claim that we will never know the truth, resolving this crime is what we have set out to do and can do.

When the assassination of President Kennedy became news, mainly through radio and wire services,  intelligence agency file clerks from around the world began to search their files for any trace of OSWALD, LEE HARVEY, and most of them quickly  realized that whatever happened in Dallas, if Oswald had anything to do with it – whatever happened there was a covert intelligence operation.

Now, to uncover a covert intelligence operation you can’t use normal criminal investigative procedures, as the Dallas police, FBI, Warren Commission, Church Committee, House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), all lone nut advocates and most conspiracy theorists have tried to do.

Rather than a standard homicide investigation, what is needed is a counter-intelligence operation, one that employs unorthodox and unique investigative techniques that create results that will not necessarily end up in court of law, but one that can determine the truth.  

One of the primary differences between a standard homicide investigation, that assembles evidence of crimes that can be presented in a court of law, a counter-intelligence investigation, by its very nature, assembles evidence by various unorthodox means to obtain information – including wire taps, ostensibly illegal black-bag break ins, mail openings, garbage inspections and undercover agents, and usually this evidence is kept out of a court of law in order to protect confidential and clandestine sources.

Others have already conducted counter-intelligence investigations of the assassination of President Kennedy, including the U.S. Marine Corps, the Office of Naval Intelligence, the CIA and foreign governments, including French Intelligence and the Soviet intelligence services. All of them, while their results were officially suppressed, concluded that one man alone could not have carried out the assassination. Therefore, it must have been a conspiracy.

Since the total truthful story of the assassination must include all of the evidence and information available, normal criminal investigations usually pick a suitable suspect, compile all of the evidence that supports that theory, and inevitably runs down dead end alleys, goes up against brick walls and is side tracked by intentionally deceptive and distracted diversions.

But everything begins to fall into place once you accept the hypothetical assumption that the assassination of President Kennedy was the result of a covert intelligence operation, and standard counter-intelligence procedures are employed to understand it.

The logical question is of course, which intelligence network was responsible for the Dealey Plaza operation?

And why weren’t they pursued like the Watergate and 9/11 perpetrators were?

And now, as we are closing in on those actually responsible for the assassination, and what intelligence network they were affiliated with, we are discovering why no one ever pursued them to the hilt before.

INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES AT DEALEY PLAZA

To begin with, there were nearly two dozen Federal Intelligence Agencies in existence at the time of the assassination, and many of them had a presence in Dallas and at Dealey Plaza.

Just looking at those who entered the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) in the minutes and hour after the last shots were fired, you come up with nearly a dozen different intelligence agencies, federal, state and local.

Among them we can name the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office, the most prolific and pretty much the first agents into the building because they were standing on the sidewalk across the street with their hands in their pockets, ordered to “stand down” in providing security for the President.

The Tampa, Florida Secret Service advance report notes that as part of JFK’s motorcade security there, a week before the assassination, the local Sheriff’s office provided deputies with shot guns and snipers with high powered rifles to stand guard at every overpass along the parade route, and on the rooftops of major buildings, since the only practical counter-sniper weapon is another sniper.

Then there’s the Dallas Police, the FBI, Secret Service, Army Intelligence (ASCI),  Texas Rangers and even the Texas Department of Parks and Wildlife, who were apparently meeting nearby at the time, and just happened to witness the assassination and be first responders at the scene of the crime.

Each of those individuals who entered the TSBD in the minutes and hours after the assassination who worked for an official security intelligence agency should have wrote a report on what they experienced, but most didn’t.

One of the attributes of a covert intelligence operation is the intelligence aspect – of knowing everything that can be known about the target and control of the field of the operation – which limits the intelligence networks at the scene, because few of them had complete control over the area at the time, except one – the one responsible for the crime.

While each of these intelligence agencies deserves equal attention, I want to focus first off on those individuals affiliated with the Assistant Chief of Staff of Intelligence (ACSI), who are, among other things, responsible for the Pentagon’s U.S. Army Reserve Intelligence operations, who did have control over the motorcade, Dealey Plaza, the Texas School Book Depository and the communications.

ASCI may not be as familiar an acronym as the FBI and CIA, it’s agents and operatives were all over Dallas and Dealey Plaza and they had the intelligence net that would have given them control of the scene and execution of the crime they called an operation.

It was an operation – a successful surgical strike to the head that killed President Kennedy, conducted by a domestic intelligence network that we can now describe in some detail, as I will do soon.

Stay Tuned. 

The Skorzeny Network in Dallas

Major Ralph P. Ganis and The Skorzeny Papers – (Skyhorse, NY, 2018)

It has been pointed out by a number of reviewers that The Skorzeny Papers book lacks citations and even examples of what the documents contained in them look like, though Ganis says they are mainly letters between Skorzeny and his wife and carbon copies of business documents in different languages that had to be translated.

I met Major Ganis in Dallas, talked to him at length, transcribed one of his radio interviews and have talked to him on the phone a number of times, all of which makes me believe that he is the real deal and has supporting records for everything he says, even though at this point, we have to take his word for it. As a military veteran who has served in three branches of the service, through five wars, I take the man at his word, though you don’t have to.

Dallas Names – the Skorzeny Intelligence Network Overlay

Maj. Ralph Ganis, an experienced and decorated U.S. military officer, says that he used research techniques he learned working in intelligence that allowed him, as he read the Skorzeny Papers, to recognize an intelligence network that was operating as business enterprises, many out of Dallas, Texas. He calls this the “Skorzeny network,” though there appears to be a number of overlapping networks, some of different intelligence agencies, others of different government nationalities.

Major Ganis makes me recall Lt. Colonel Anthony Shaffer, who was assigned by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to create the Able Danger Counter-Intelligence (CI) computerized program that led to the identity of the network of radical Islamic extremists responsible for the 9/11 attacks, before the attacks occurred.

https://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2018/12/application-of-able-danger-data-mining.html

Ganis however, because of his military training, and our own counter-intelligence review, has the retrospective advantage of hinsight by trying to uncover and decipher the intelligence network responsible for the Dealey Plaza Operation - years, decades – a half century after it occurred. So we have vast resources at our disposal, and can narrow down areas of interest and zero in on those responsible.

According to Ganis: “Skorzeny’s Dallas business and social circles were the critical piece for carrying out the assassination…..By analyzing Skorzeny’s Dallas business network, we can see for the first time a coherent covert assassination operation.”

Years ago I acquired a trade paperback book at a used bookstore called A Money Tree Grows in Dallas that was a rundown of Dallas corporations, including addresses, the names of their boards of directors, and major stockholders, that I used to cross-reference a number of important players – such as Arthur Collins, Leon Jaworski, Jean deMenil, John Connally, and others, documenting their ties and relationships. After all, if you serve on the board of directors with less than a dozen men, you must know them all pretty well.

And Ganis in the Skorzeny Papers plays the same game, and it works, as we have come to the same conclusions though from vastly different backgrounds, and using different sources and research techniques.

As Ganis writes, “….The evidence shows that Skorzeny’s network had access to and control of essential operational elements necessary for an assassination, the structure to deflect participation, and the ability (to) synchronize the entire affair.”

(There are) Ganis continues (p. 302-303), “…three descriptive groups….the action arm, those individuals responsible for the assassination; the deception group, those responsible for the cover story and setup of a scapegoat; and the support elements, those in charge of communications, transportation, logistics, security, safe houses, and other operational necessities.”

If the assassination was a covert intelligence operation, then those who planned, set up and conducted the operation must have had to control the entire scene from beginning to end, and that certainly narrows down the suspects.

And one of the CIA techniques for determining the validity of defectors or new sources of information is the amount of new names, places and events that are provided, and Ganis comes up with quite a few.

One of the Dallas oil men Ganis says is mentioned in the Skorzeny Papers, who I had never heard of before, is Algur H. Meadows, who founded the Meadows Foundation in Dallas in 1948 to promote philanthropic non-profit enterprises, like the Meadows Historic center, which provides office space for non-profit organizations in Dallas.

It just so happens that the CIA, created just the year before, set up a means to fund secret CIA covert operations through such non-profit philanthropic foundations, such as the Meadows Foundation, and the Catherwood Foundation, also established in 1948. While I have not studied the Meadows Foundation activities over the years, as I have the Catherwood Foundation, I am confident that any review will reveal similar operations that Meadows performed for the CIA.

https://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2018/09/catherwood-fund-and-cuban-aide-relief.html

While this secret funding network was kept from the American public until it was exposed by Ramparts Magazine during the LBJ administration, the Soviets knew about it from the very beginning, as Frank Wisner, the head of CIA covert operations, explained the details to Kim Philby, the British MI6 representative in Washington who was also a Soviet double-agent. And Philby wrote about it in his autobiography “My Secret War.”

According to Ganis: “A third man who was deeply involved with the (Algur H.) Meadows oil deal was Colonel Jack Crichton, vice president and director of DeGolyer & MacNaughton. Crichton too was a veteran OSS officer from the European Theater during World War II. Crichton remained in the U.S. Army Reserve after the war and in 1956 had organized a U.S. Army Intelligence unit in Dallas – the 488^th Military Intelligence Detachment. The 488^th was tasked with strategic analysis but by virtue Colonel Crichton’s ties to Skorzeny through the Spanish oil venture it opens up the possibility that Colonel Crichton’s unit was somehow connected to the Skorzeny network. Certainly, Crichton had a communications channel to Skorzeny via the General American Oil Company.” (p. 160 – not listed in the index)

Skyhorse books in New York City published Ganis’ book, and also published another book on the assassination of President Kennedy in 2013 by Republican political dirty trickster Roger Stone, that blames the assassination on LBJ. Stone also lists Jack Crichton in the index, but none of the references are included in the text narrative, which means they were intentionally censored from Stone’s manuscript.

According to Stone’s index, Crichton, John Alston is mentioned on eleven pages under the headings of Bush (315-16), Castro assassination plot (305), Mamantov (273, 317), in motorcade (235), Operation 40 (299), papers of (317) and Texas connections (316-17), but if you go to each of those pages, there is no mention of Crichton at all.

There are two different spellings of Crichton’s name in the Skorzeny book index – Crichton and Critchton, with the former being the correct one, and the one that I will use.

Now we can surmise what some of these index references were about – such as the fact that (Ilya) Mamantov was recruited by Crichton to serve as a translator for Marina Oswald in the hours after the assassination, but I don’t know of any association between Crichton and Operation 40 or a Castro assassination plot, though I’m sure those references would be interesting.

There are other listings for Jack Crichton in Ganis’ book however (p. 225), in which he mentions three other men I have never heard of before – Clifford Forster, James Burnham, and Archibald Roosevelt, Jr., and their political action organizations.

As Ganis writes: “In February 1960, (attorney Clifford) Forster, along with James Burnham, a contract CIA officer, founded the American Committee for France and Algeria….Later, Forster would also be involved with ‘The Committee for Aid to Katanga Freedom Fighters,’ another CIA-associated pressure group for the Congo. This group included CIA station chief Archibald Roosevelt, Jr. and Colonel Jack Crichton of Dallas, among other linked to this story….all represent the exact geographical areas, precisely the right time, for Skorzeny’s covert operations in these areas.”

As has been pointed out before, one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist, so it’s hard to discern who is on the right side here.

Now it certainly is curious that Jack Crichton was interested in the situation in the Congo as well as Algeria, as both come into play in the assassination.

Both President Kennedy and Fidel Castro also held interest in the situation in the Congo, originally a Belgian colony. Certain areas of the Congo – and I suspect it is Katanga, held important uranium reserves used in making nuclear reactions and atomic bombs. Castro sent some of his military to the Congo and some of those JMWAVE Cubans went to the Congo after the assassination.

Although I’m not acquainted with the political situation in the Congo at the time, though I will beef up on it as soon as possible, I believe President Kennedy supported the independence of African nations from their European imperialists, as he did with Algerian independence from France, another hot spot that had the attention of JFK, as well as those suspects in his assassination.

It is certainly interesting that the Dallas oil men like Crichton would be concerned about the foreign affairs of both the French in Algeria and Belgians in the Congo.

Another Dallas oil man – Jean deMenil, was head of the French Schulemburger company, whose Huma, Louisiana facility had an underground arms bunker where explosives, dynamite, arms and ammunition were kept. Before the Bay of Pigs and French Algerian crisis, both of which occurred in mid-1961, the Huma arms bunker was burglarized, by David Ferrie and his band of bozos, and the booty taken to Guy Bannister’s office and Ferrie’s apartment in New Orleans. Some of the burglars said that they had a key, and it was not a burglary, but a gift, and the arms were to be used either for Cubans fighting Castro or the OAS terrorists fighting deGaul to keep Algeria French.

The CIA’s Catherwood Foundation philanthropic front, besides covertly funding the Cuban Aid Relief and Catholic Welfare charities supporting Cuban refugees, also funded the Columbia-Catherwood Award for journalism. In 1963 the New York Times reporter won the award for his reporting on the Algerian crisis.

According to Ganis, the Skorzeny Papers reveal that: “The American Committee for France and Algeria’s first publication, called ‘Integration,’ did not appear until September 1960. The organization’s mission statement read, ‘The American Committee for France and Algeria has been organized to explain to the American people the reasons why we, a group of American citizens, believe that, in the interest of humanity and Western civilization, American policy is, as that of our allies will, be best served by an Algeria integrated with France.” (p. 225-226)

Of course once President Kennedy assumed office, that did not jive with his policies, which encouraged French President deGaul to free Algeria as a French colony, and led to a number of assassination attempts on deGaul, including some by the OAS. One such assassination attempt on deGaul by the OAS was a “military style” ambush of his motorcade that failed.

Ganis says that, “One last facet of the Congo saga that is a unique and important link connecting Otto Skorzeny to the CIA efforts in the country is a private psychological warfare group formed in the wake of Lumumba’s death. This was a pressure group aligned with conservative elements within the United States government supporting an independent Katanga, called ‘The Committee for Aid to Katanga Freedom Fighters.’ The committee was a small, but powerful lobby directed at garnering U.S. public support for the breakaway province in the Congo. It appeared on the scene in the fall of 1961, months after Skorzeny’s jaunt down to the Congo to conduct his Lumumba assassination assessment, but well within the CIA’s continued period of covert action in the country. That interest actually never abated, and the Congo Crisis went on for years. Skorzeny is directly linked to The Committee for Aid to Katanga Freedom Fighters and, from all available evidence in the Skorzeny papers, was a hidden advisor to the group. His principal contact to the group was one of his main business partners, Cliford Forster, the well seasoned veteran of the psychological warfare and political operations such as those in France in 1949 involving Paix et Liberte. Forster will also support a similar pressure group for the French Algerian crisis.”

As Ganis points our, “Significantly, a member of the Katanga committee was Dallas, Texas oil executive, and U.S. Army Reserve intelligence officer, Colonel Jack Crichton. Crichton also knew Skorzeny from the Delta oil drilling project in Spain beginning in 1953 and continuing through 1963. Crichton’s involvement with the Congo pressure group brings him even deeper into the covert operations of the Skorzeny network.”

“To gain international attention,” Ganis writes, “the committee took out a full-page ad in the New York Times in December 1961, explaining the mission and goals of the organization and declaring, ‘Katanga is the Hungary of 1961.’ The stated purpose was ‘a wholehearted desire to keep alive the spirit of resistance of the Katanga people, who only wish to live their lives in peace, without outside interference.”

It should be noted that the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC), to which the accused assassin belonged, also took out a full page ad in the New York Times in order to explain its mission and goals and garner public support. And Ganis comes up with yet another new name – Michel Stuelens, when he writes: “The committee operated in conjunction with a Belgian expatriate named Michel Stuelens. He ran the Katanga Information Service (KIS), a Katangese government organization, from its headquarters on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue. The KIS engaged in a massive press campaign directed at the American public, including Washington politicians, business leaders, and academia….” (p. 289)

According to Ganis (p. 225-226), “Oddly, the last issue of the US/France Report appears to be Number 11, December 1963.. That issue carried the headline article ‘The Assassination.’ The article, on ‘the conspiracy’ which it explains is a vast communist network within the United States, aligned with the left. According to the article, the reason the assassination took place, was to lay blame on the far right, and this would have happened if not for the capture of Lee Harvey Oswald before his intended escape.” 

Then Ganis and the Skorzeny Papers come up with two new companies – new to me – Premier Petrochemical and Delta Drilling, and a few new names – Lewis W. McNaughton and Joe Zeppa, and then sets them down at the same board table with Jack Crichton and – Colonel D. Harold Byrd, the owner of the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD).

It is also of passing interest that George H. W. Bush was in Dallas on the day of the assassination, staying at the Dallas Sheraton Hotel, the scene of many curious events, and was in Tyler, Texas at the time of the assassination, flying there on Joe Zeppa's plane. 

 Ganis informs us that the Skorzeny Papers mention the fact that: “On January 9, 1963, Dallas papers announced the formation of the new petrochemical company called Premier Petrochemical. The company was to deal in synthetic fertilizers. An important factor for this book is the chairman of the new company was Algur H. Meadows and that one of the companies’ stockholders was Colonel D. Harold Byrd. Others included Lewis W. McNaughton and Joe Zeppa of Delta Drilling, overseen by Colonel Jack Crichton.”

Ganis (p. 335) concludes that, “It should also be pointed out here that the Skorzeny papers also confirm he too was involved in synthetic fertilizer. The importance of the company formation is its potential use by Skorzeny in manipulating the support pieces to the Dallas operation. In fact, on October 12, 1963, the Dallas papers carried an article on Meadows, stating he was to receive a medal from the Spanish government for his oil work in the country…..There is yet much to be investigated in these connections. But clearly the Skorzeny Dallas business network was active in Madrid just prior to the assassination.”

Indeed, there is much more to be investigated in these connections, but clearly there was a covert intelligence network operating in Dallas at the time of the assassination, and Colonel Jack Crichton and Colonel D. Harold Byrd were in the thick of it. 

PATHFINDER - Parts 1 - 5 The Plan to Kill Castro Redirected to JFK at Dallas

PATHFINDER AT JMWAVE NPIC – Part One 

“I was given a weapon… a beautiful German bolt-action rifle with a powerful telescopic sight, all neatly packed in a custom-made padded carrying case… a box of ammo, twenty rounds. I was told that I wouldn't have to sight the rifle, as it had already been zeroed in. Apparently the resistance had obtained a building facing a location that Castro frequented at the time....We were supposed to debark onto a Cuban boat near Varadero Beach, an area I knew from my childhood. From there we would be taken to rendezvous with members of the anti-Castro resistance…..We would be provided a safe house, then move to the room where we'd be able to shoot Fidel….”

- Bay of Pigs Pathfinder Felix Rodriguez  (The Shadow Warrior) 1. 

PART I - JFKcountercoup: PATHFINDER AT JMWAVE

Pathfinder – the CIA Contingency Plan to Kill Castro that was Redirected to JFK at Dallas..

As we are familiar with the National Photo Interpretation Center (NPIC) activities during the Cuban Missile Crisis and the two separate incidents when the Zapruder film was worked on at NPIC over the weekend of the assassination, both are important events, but the most significant lead NPIC employees give us is not concerned with photos or films but files – the Pathfinder files.

PATHFINDER was the code name given to a CIA contingency plan to kill Fidel Castro, that I believe was “redirected” to kill JFK at Dealey Plaza.

The “Pathfinder” operation would have gone the way of Jimmy Hoffa, as all documentary records of it disappeared within the purged CIA files, if it wasn’t for three – not one, or two, but three (actually eight) NPIC technicians who blew the whistle when they learned that Congress was interested in the CIA plots to kill Castro and came forward with their information.

According to the CIA no one there today heard of an operation called “Pathfinder,” and they have no records of anything called “Pathfinder,” except for one reference in a file devoted to Watergate burglar Frank Sturgis, who was heavily involved in Cuban activities, but wasn’t an agent or operative of the CIA, but rather US Air Force Intelligence.

Though its significance was not recognized at the time, we first learned about the Pathfinder files from the Congressional records released under the JFK Act of 1992, when it was recorded on the official record that in 1975 Dino Brugioni of the NPIC informed the CIA top brass that three NPIC technicians who were assigned to the Miami, anti-Castro Cuban JMWAVE station recalled working on the PATHFINDER program that was an assassination plan to kill Castro. 

When the Congressional Church Committee was investigating the CIA-Mafia plot to kill Castro, these NPIC technicians, assigned to the JMWAVE station, came forward to make their superiors aware of two CIA contingency plans to kill Castro and one to kill his brother Raoul.

To dispense with the Raoul plot first, it was, according to the NPIC technicians, a “drive by” maritime speed boat attack on a Cuban North Shore estate where Fidel Castro’s brother Raoul ostensibly lived, hoping he was in residence, and that mission may have even taken place. The NPIC JMWAVE techs said that “Rip Robertson,” one of only two American to go ashore at the Bay of Pigs, was connected to this operation.

The other two contingency plans are much more relevant to the assassination of President Kennedy, and according to the JMWAVE NIPIC techs, was given the code name PATHFINDER.

The NPIC technicians said that they not only assisted in the contingency plan for “PATHFINDER,” supplying photos and maps of the target areas, but the PATHINDER files were kept in the NPIC section of the JMWAVE station, rather than in the station’s Operational Files, where they would normally be kept. 

According to the NPIC technicians stationed at JMWAVE, PATHFINDER was a contingency plan to kill Castro with high powered rifles when he drove by in an open jeep near the Bay of Pigs, which apparently became somewhat of a tourist attraction and resort area after the failed invasion in April 1961. It was reported that Castro kept a boat docked there. 

While the PATHFINDER plan was, according to the NPIC techs, “disapproved” by “higher authority” (aka JFK and RFK), another, similar plan was devised to kill Castro in a sniper attack when he drove by in an open jeep to Xandau, the former North Shore Dupont estate, once owned by the Delaware Dupont family, but frequented by Castro. 

THE SIGNIFIANCE OF THE PATHFINDER PLAN AND FILES

The Pathfinder operation and the CIA Pathfinder files cut right to the heart of the matter – where the plots to kill Castro coincide with what occurred at Dealey Plaza – the Dealey Plaza operation, though its significance wasn’t recognized when we first learned about Pathfinder.

Malcolm Blunt, who has spent more time roaming the JFK Records Collection at the National Archives than anyone I know, first provided me with the Pathfinder documents he uncovered.

Larry Hancock was one of the first to run down this alley and wrote about it in his book “Someone Would Have Talked”, that I reviewed at my blog and quoted extensively, but its significance still escaped close scrutiny, as it has until now.

[ JFKCountercoup2: Larry Hancock - "Someone Would Have Talked" ]

If JFK was killed by a deranged lone nut all by himself, then Pathfinder means nothing, but if the President was killed by his enemies in Washington, and what happened at Dealey Plaza was not only a conspiracy, but a very specific and narrowly defined covert intelligence operation, successfully conducted by a domestic anti-Communist intelligence network, then Pathfinder is the key – the code word for the off-the-shelf contingency plan to kill Fidel Castro that was redirected to JFK at Dealey Plaza.

Before getting into the specifics of the detailed Pathfinder plan for a first-class highly trained sniper to kill Castro with a single bullet to the head from a high-powered rifle as he rode by in an open jeep, as he often did, consider this:

First we begin with the statements of Warren Commission attorney Samuel Stern (who is still alive and practicing in Washington D.C.), who told the HSCA that if they had known about the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro they would have looked into that area thoroughly.

Stern stated that had the Commission learned of the CIA-Mafia conspiracies to assassinate Fidel Castro, “we would have gone much more into Cuba, the CIA, and the Mafia. We would have had a whole host of new avenues calling for investigation. And we would have obviously had to develop some new sources of information – other than the agency.”

[ JFKCountercoup2: HSCA Sam Stern Interview - Smoking Doc.#2  ]

And while the Warren Commission didn’t do it, and the HSCA was prevented from doing it, that doesn’t stop us from conducting such a proper investigation of the CIA plots to kill Castro that are entwined with the assassination of President Kennedy.

We first learn of these plots from Washington political columnist Jack Anderson.

Anderson’s source was John Rosselli, one of the three Mafia bosses who were originally recruited by the CIA’s Robert Mahu and "Big" Jim O’Connell during the Eisenhower administration.

Of the three, Santo Trafficante, San Giancana and Rosselli, only Rosselli was still in the CIA’s assassination game in 1963, with O'Connell having been replaced by William Harvey as Rosselli’s CIA case officer after the Bay of Pigs. .

Rosselli was one of a number of rich, patriotic Americans who financially supported teams of anti-Castro Cuban commandos that were trained at remote JMWAVE bases in south Florida. The rich Americans thought it patriotic to support the commando teams, even though they were already being financed by the CIA, but the private funding gave them an air of independence apart from the US government. (Besides Rosselli two others that I know of who supported JMWAVE commando teams were William Paley and Clare Booth Luce).

After his pal Giancana was murdered in his own home shortly before he was to testify before the HSCA, Rosselli testified in Executive Session before a Congressional Committee (Three times) and then visited Jack Anderson to tell him what he said.

BILL TURNER

At a COPA Conference in Dallas, former FBI agent and original JFK assassination investigator Bill Turner said:  

"We now know to a fairly good degree of certainty what happened at Dealey Plaza. The motives were piling up - the Bay of Pigs, Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam, the back channel to Cuba, - the motives were piling up to the point they had to assassinate him. I think it’s' pretty obvious, with the compilation of the information we have today, that the mechanism of the crime came out of the allegiance between the CIA and the Mafia. They already had an assassination apparatus set up for killing Castro and they just switched targets and killed Kennedy instead."

In narrowing down which plot was the specific plan to kill Castro that was redirected to JFK at Dealey Plaza we can eliminate the poisons, the bazookas, the bombs and the poison pen and concentrate only on those contingency plans to kill Castro that utilize a high powered rifle to shoot Castro as he drove in an open car, just as JFK was killed. And Pathfinder fits that bill.

How you learn about such important information – the source, who gives it to you, and what the documentary records show, are all aspects of that must be considered in evaluating its significance as evidence. 

NPIC AT JMWAVE

We first learned about Pathfinder from our old friend at NPIC - Dino Brugioni, who we know from his books on Photo Fakery and the Cuban Missile Crisis, and his work on the Zapruder film at NPIC, on the weekend of the assassination, making the first set of briefing board.

In this MEMORANDUM FOR THE RECORD, dated 21 March 1975,

[ https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=104139&relPageId=14 ]

It is noted that:

1)      On 19 March, Dino A. Brugioni, Chief, Western Geographic Division (NPIC), informed me (CIA Operational Division Chief) that three personnel assigned to his division had told him that while serving at JMWAVE, Miami, Florida or in the Imagery Analysis Service in Washington during the 1960’s, they had heard references to assassination plans on Fidel Castro.

2)      On 20 March, I met with the following NPIC personnel who had either served in the Imagery Analysis Service or at JMWAVE on Cuban related problems: Gordon Duvall, Earl Shoemaker, Tom Helmke, Bruce Barrett, Reyes Ponce, George Arthur, Eugene Lydon, and William Hanlon. The purpose of this meeting was to ascertain whether their participation was related to case officer generated materials or bona fide operations.
 [Note: that's eight witnesses, not three]. 

3)      There appeared to be two plans involving Fidel Castro and an incident that may have been related to Raul Castro…….

4)      The incident involving Raul Castro was not a formalized plan. It consisted of a paramilitary raid on Santiago de Cuba harbor. There was a rumor at JMWAVE that, while exiting the harbor, Raul Castro’s home had been fired upon by a paramilitary case officer named “Rip” Robertson. 

5)      To the best of my knowledge these facts represent the totality of any participation by our personnel in these matters. We have no further knowledge that the Fidel Castro operation ever advanced beyond the planning stage. 

SIGNED Edward S. Cates, Chief, Imagery Exploitation Group,  NPIC

While it may not have officially  “advanced beyond the planning stage” and was not implemented against the original target - Fidel Castro, Pathfinder was an off-the-shelf tactical plan that could have, and I believe was redirected to JFK at Dealey Plaza, and further analysis can prove me right or wrong,

It appears that “Rip” Robertson’s ride-by shoot up of Raul Castro’s home had already taken place, and the two Fidel Castro operations were formalized into distinct plans that, according to the Imagery Exploitation Group at NPIC, didn’t advance beyond the planning stage.

And there were plans to kill Castro known to the NPIC techs  – two of them specifically.

According to this NPIC chief the plans involving Fidel, to the knowledge of our people were: 

(a)    A folder stored in the Photo interpretation area at JMWAVE contained materials relating to a plan to assassinate Castro in the Bay of Pigs resort area where he maintained a yacht and was known to vacation. The plan, possibly with the code word PATHFINDER, apparently had been disapproved and was not under active consideration at the time. Our people did not participate actively in the plan in any regard. 

(b)   While assigned to the Imagery Analysis Service, a number of our photo interpreters supported Carl Jenkins of the DD/P concerning a plan to assassinate Castro at the DuPont Varadero Beach Estate, east of Havana. Castro was known to frequent the estate and the plan was to use a high powered rifle in the attempt. The photo interpretation support was restricted to providing annotated photographs and line drawings of the estate. To our knowledge, this plan also was never implemented.

In a follow up report from Joseph Seltzer at the CIA dated 8 May 1975, in response to the NPIC inquiries regarding Carl Jenkins and PATHFINDER, Seltzer wrote:

[  1993.08.05.14:4212;750028 - https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=104139 - relPageId=13&tab=page  ]     

SUBJECT: Assassination Plans Against Castro
REFERENCE: Memorandum for the Record dated 21 March 1975 from Mr. Cates, NPIC 

1.      On receipt of reference memorandum, we reviewed the official folder on Mr. Carl Jenkins, a retired Agency employee, and asked the Directorate of Operations for any available information on PATHFINDER. Both efforts were fruitless – no one in the Directorate of Operations recognized the cryptonym PATHFINDER. 

2.      In our search of other files in connection with other staff activities, we came, just by chance, a reference to Pathfinder in an FBI memorandum dated 20 January 1961 concerning Frank Anthony Sturgis. We are unable to offer any speculation, reasonable or otherwise, on its significance in this memorandum or in the NPIC memorandum.

Because these were "in house" agency communications between one division of the CIA and another, and was not shared with the Church Intelligence Committee, the "official folder on Mr. Carl Jenkins" that was reviewed was not subject to the JFK Act and is not in the JFK Collection at the National Archives and available to the public. And because Jenkins is still alive, it is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). But because Jenkins is still alive, we can and will try to interview him.

Three years later, on June 20, 1978, the second chief counsel to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) G. Robert Blakey, wrote to Mr. Scott Brekenridge, Principal Co-cordinator between the HSCA and the Office of Legislative Counsel, Central Intelligence Agency, asking a series of requests for documentary records. 

“In connection with its investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of President Kennedy, the House Select Committee on Assassinations requests access to the following information:

1.      Any and all reports and documents, including indices and records under any pseudonyms, concerning or referring to Jose Luis Romero. Romero is believed to be a pseudonym. Romero reportedly served in the French military in Algeria in the 1950’s and worked with American intelligence. He was reportedly also an agent of the French secret military organization O.A.S.

2.      Any and all reports or documents concerning or referring to any French nationals or citizens involved in plots or conspiracies to assassinate President Kennedy or Fidel Castro.

3.      Any and all reports or documents concerning or referring to PIERRE OWEN DIEZ DE URE. Ure is reportedly a French national who lived in Cuba in the early 1960’s and assisted American intelligence.

4.      Any and all documents concerning or referring to VALENTIN VASILEVICH BAKULIN. Served at Soviet Embassy in Mexico City in 1959. Referred to in FBI files on Norman Rothman.

5.      Any and all documents concerning or referring to OPERATION PROUDFOOT, including indices.

6.      Any and all documents concerning or referring to OPERATION PATHFINDER, including all indices.

7.      Any and all documents concerning or referring to JAGGERS-CHILES-STOVALL CORP. in Dallas, Texas.

8.      Any and all documents concerning or referring to RICARDO MORALES-NAVARETTE, aka Ricardo Navarette-Morales.

Sincerely, G. Robert Blakey, Chief Counsel and Director HSCA

On 14 July, 1978, Marvin L. Smith, Chief, Operations Group, responded to the HSCA Requests of 20 June 1978.

[ 104-10059-10397 CIA https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=39464 - relPageId=1&tab=page ]

A.    (S) An intensive search of the files and indices of this Directorate revealed the following information on the individuals and organizations listed in the referenced request, which, unless otherwise indicated, is being forwarded to your Office. Since birthdates were not provided on the individuals, some of the information may not pertain to them.

1.      Jose Luis Romero  - No information

2.      French nationals or citizens involved in plots to assassinate President Kennedy or Fidel Castro – No information.

3.      Pierre Owen Diez de Ure – (a) 201-0327950 (copy)  (b) UFGA-06154 (copy)

4.      Valentin Vasilevich Bakulin – 2 files

5.      Operation Proudfood – No information

6.      Operation Pathfinder – No information

7.      Jaggers-Chiles Stovall Corp. – CI staff has a reference to Chiles and Stoval, Inc., which leads to a document dated 31 January, 1964, filed in 201-189248 (Lee Harvey Oswald) on temporary charge to CI./EXO.

8.      Ricardo MORALES- NAVARETTE, aka Ricardo NAVARETTE-MORALES – 18 files – (a) 201-0285923 (on temporary charge to Barbara Soderquist, CI/EXO) with the others being: DBF-BELL-DIR-HKH-DBA-DCE-DBD-DBC and CSCI files.

B.     (U) Re: Third Party….

C.     (U) It has been determined that none of the individuals listed in the referenced request has been the subject of an FOIA or PA request.

SIGNED  Marvin L. Smith\

PART II - PATHFINDER at JMWAVE and Dealey Plaza

Part II - JFKcountercoup: PART II - PATHFINDER at JMWAVE and Dealey Plaza

As the CIA Operations officer told the NPIC official, and the CIA told the HSCA, there are no existing records on PATHFINDER at CIA, and we know why since we have three examples of how the PATHFINDER files were intentionally miss-filed.

 – 1) at JMWAVE where the Pathfinder records were kept in the NPIC section of the station instead of in the Operational Files, where they should have been kept; 2) RFK ordered the JFK assassination records at NPIC to be boxed and sent to the Smithsonian Institute instead of the National Archives, where they belong;  and 3) the NPIC memo on the JMWAVE techs who recalled Pathfinder in 1975 was placed in Frank Sturgis’ file, where it was buried until discovered by the CIA searching for records requested by the HSCA.

While the official investigations of the Pathfinder plans to kill Castro apparently ended there, we can continue the inquiry ourselves, to see where this lead goes, and some of us are doing just that, beginning with Carl Jenkins.

The NPIC technicians at JMWAVE said that “a number of our photo interpreters supported Carl Jenkins of the DD/P (Deputy Directorate of Plans) concerning a plan to assassinate Castro at the DuPont Veradero Beach Estate, east of Havana. Castro was known to frequent the estate and the plan was to use a high powered rifle in the attempt. The photo interpretation support was restricted to providing annotated photographs and line drawings of the estate.”

Where are these annotated photographs and line drawings of the estate today? They should be in the JFK Collection at the National Archives and open to the public but apparently are among the missing Pathfinder records or the NPIC files, boxed and sent to the Smithsonian instead of the NARA.

Ah, yes, and we've learned a good deal more about Mr. Carl Jenkins, the CIA officer who was responsible for training some five shooters assigned to the Pathfinder mission and preparing to implement it, - the contingency plan for a sniper to shoot Castro as he rode in an open jeep at Veradero.

On hearing the NPIC technicians mention Carl Jenkins' name and description as a DD/Plans officer, the CIA Operations chief reviewed a folder on Jenkins. But since that communications with the NPIC’s Brugoni did not involve the Church Committee, that was active and investigating just those issues at that time – the Jenkins folder is not subject to the JFK Act and is not at the JFK Collection at the NARA.

And because Jenkins is still alive, that folder is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). But because he is still alive, we can still talk to him, and will try to do that even though he is very elderly and living with family.

Since the NPIC assassination files were boxed and sent to the Smithsonian in 1964, the Church Committee was unaware of Pathfinder or the NPIC technician’s statements in 1975; and since the failure of the HSCA to pursue Pathfinder in 1978, we have learned a lot about Mr. Jenkins over the years.

GENE WHEATON 

In the 1980s Eugene “Gene” Wheaton was one of the first to blow the whistle on what became known as the Iran-Contra affair. Wheaton was not a silly conspiracy theorist, but rather a former military investigator (Army and Air Force), policeman, private security consultant and Mid-eastern agent for Rockwell International, the overseas division of Rockwell-Collins, Inc. a major defense contractor. 

BK NOTES: Rockwell merged with Collins Radio - to form Rockwell-Collins. 

Wheaton had received a prestigious presidential medal and award from President Nixon for his service in the Middle-East as a border security and drug smuggling expert.

Wheaton worked closely with Carl Jenkins at National Airlines, a cargo shipment company that may have been a front for the CIA (as described JFKcountercoup: CIAir ). Wheaton apparently owned the airline and hired Jenkins to be his Washington representative. When Wheaton was in Washington he stayed in a bedroom reserved for him at Jenkin’s home, and they were close personal friends and business partners for many years.

Wheaton and Jenkins became entwined in the Iran-Contra affair when their cargo airline was contracted to deliver arms to the Contras fighting the left-wing Sandinistas in Nicaragua in the civil war following the departure of long time dictator Anastiso Somoza, who some called the “Godfather of the Bay of Pigs.”

As Wheaton later put it, that was when he was “recruited into Oliver North’s Network." It wasn't long before Wheaton realized they were wrongfully appropriating hundreds of millions of dollars in military equipment (mainly missiles) and selling them to terrorist nations in the Middle East in exchange for hostages.

Wheaton said they were accumulating a multi-million dollar war chest that was to be used to fund covert intelligence operations without the approval of Congress.

First Wheaton went to President Reagan’s CIA Director William Casey, the last of the old OSS hands to hold that position, and he told Casey the whole story.

Now who gets to waltz right in to the office of the Director of the CIA? Wheaton had that capability and only used it once. Casey said he would look into it, but Wheaton realized that Casey was behind it. They didn’t like Congress deciding what covert ops could be funded and what couldn’t, especially when Congress balked at arming the Contras, and only approved humanitarian medical and food supplies.

So Wheaton then told the story to Dan Sheehan, Esq., the attorney for the Christic Institute who prepared a civil suit indictment against North, General Richard Secord and others involved in the Iran-Contra scandal. Some of North’s arms given to the Contras were used to kill and wound some Americans in Nicaragua. Sheehan represented them and their families, and used them to sue the “Oliver North Network,” that was then being detailed in daily news and media reports.

This was especially so after CIA contract agent and baggage kicker Eugene Hassenfras was captured by the Sandinistas after his plane was shot down. Hassenfras confessed to the CIA support of the Contras and was found to have in his possession, the phone number of covert commando Felix Rodriguez, a Bay of Pigs veteran working with the Contras and friend of George H.W. Bush.

Rodriguez was also one of those named by Wheaton as being an associate of Jenkins and suspected of being one of the "shooters" Jenkins and Harper (and USA Ranger Ed Roderick) trained at the Point Mary, Key Largo training site. 

While Wheaton only got a footnote in Sheehan’s legal brief, he was on the radar, and the case generated even more headlines, but a judge dismissed the suit and fined the Christic Institute enough to put it out of business.

When Wheaton was asked why he blew the whistle on his friends and business partners in regards to the Iran-Contra scandal he responded, “Because I’m a cop.”

And Wheaton did work as a city policeman in Oklahoma for a few years between stints in the military.

THE ARRB and the "CONVOLUTED PLOT." 

Things then went quiet for a decade or so, but Wheaton came out of the woodwork again in the mid-1990s when he learned about the Congressional passage of the JFK Act of 1992. That law, unanimously passed by Congress and reluctantly signed by President Bush, established the Assassinations Records Review Board (ARRB) and JFK Collection at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), and required all government agencies to release to the public any and all records regarding the assassination of President Kennedy.

Wheaton wrote a letter to ARRB chairman Judge John Tunheim, telling him some basic background, establishing the fact that he was not just another silly conspiracy theorists. He said he had information that might be of interest to the Review Board that they might want to pursue. And the Review Board took him seriously, at first.

Wheaton talked on the phone with ARRB investigator Anne Buttermer, an attorney, and he gave her the basic story as he knew it, and they arranged to meet in person in Washington D.C., when Wheaton gave Buttermer some supporting documents, including Carl Jenkins’ vita-resume and his passport, among other things.

Those items should be open to the public in the JFK Collection at the NARA. [BK Notes: For Jenkins’ Resume/Vita see: http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2018/10/carl-e-jenkins-vita.html - 

And A JFK Counter-Coup Research Feather for your cap to anyone who comes up with Jenkins' Passport.]

According to Buttimer's ARRB outside contact report, Wheaton told her "Cuban exiles who were originally trained by the CIA to kill Castro, killed Kennedy instead, considering him a traitor for his failure to support them at the Bay of Pigs." 

Wheaton said that "people above the Cubans wanted JFK killed for other reasons," and that "the matter is not complex, but convoluted."

Buttermer then suddenly quit her job at the ARRB and disappeared, and the Review Board never followed up on Wheaton’s information and failed to get files on the relevant individuals named by Wheaton. He belatedly received a ARRB form letter thanking him for contacting them.

TWO DOCUMENTARY FILMED INTERVIEWS 

Then at the turn of the century Matt Ehling, a documentary film maker from Public Records Media corresponded with and filmed an extensive interview with Wheaton. Although most of it concerned Wheaton’s role in the Iran-Contra scandal, he does touch on some interesting things – including the Zeta-Diogenes Program.

Wheaton:  “In Italy, in 1962, I was recruited into … I was approached to become part of an assassination network in the intelligence community. I was there (in Italy) from ’61-’63 - as an (Air Force) OSI agent working out of Aviano Air Base…In ’62, shortly after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and the embarrassment of the intelligence community, they … CIA covert operators in conjunction with some people in the Pentagon wanted to set up a secret cell –(a) worldwide cell of intelligence agents that would be called on for, uh, torture, interrogations, and assassinations, if necessary…I was approached.  A man came out from Washington, talked to me, and described it as … in the Air Force - I don’t know if it was that way in all the services and the CIA - but in the Air Force it was called the Zeta-Diogenes Program, and the ‘ZD Program’ for short.  And each agent that was indoctrinated, recruited into it would be given this secret identifier on his master military record in Washington DC, and only another ZD controlling officer would recognize it.  Nobody in personnel or anybody else would know that it was there.” 

“They went looking for young, super-patriotic … um, guys … flag-wavers … with military and police background … uh, above-average intelligence … who could work on their own.  Who would do anything for their country.  They thought.  I was approached because I fit that mold.  Conservative.  Oklahoma.  Big family.  Flag wavers.  Patriotic.  I had been in the Marine Corps before the Air Force, and I’d been a police officer before that.  And I fit the mold.  Because of the compartmentalization, and so forth, I never knew anybody else in that program, except I knew that General Joe Cappucci had been…for the Air Force portion of this thing. In ’65, I transferred from the Air Force to the Army … I don’t know if I was recruited in or rejected … they just came out and interviewed me, and told me what it was about, and if they needed me, the idea was that you’d be sent on temporary duty someplace, and then you’d disappear and you’d go where you were really supposed to go.  And then come back and your temporary duty would continue, and you’d go back to your regular base.  And they could call these individuals out from all over the world.  They wouldn’t be a team - they’d be individuals. The next time I was specifically approached by this - the next generation of these people - was during 1985, when I was being recruited into Ollie North’s network.”

[   https://www.publicrecordmedia.org/   /   http://www.publicrecordmedia.org/gene-wheaton/]

I thought Wheaton was unique in that he served in three branches of the military at different times – the Marines, Army and Air Force, and I could only think of one other person who did that – Oswald’s half brother John Pic, who enlisted in the Marines like his brothers, spent years in the Coast Guard and then joined the Air Force and was in training at Lackland AFB in Fort Worth when his kid brother was charged with killing the President. Larry Hancock however, tells me that is not uncommon for those who make the military a career.

In 2005 William M. Law and Hancock tracked Wheaton down and filmed an interview with him that was presented at the JFK Lancer Conference in Dallas that year, but wasn’t posted publicly until 2018.

[Wheaton Interview with WML:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DPT9Oc0lsU ]

In that interview Wheaton made it clear that he had no personal knowledge of the assassination of President Kennedy, other than what he picked up in private conversations over the years, during dinner and drinking talk among his National Airline partner and housemate Carl Jenkins. Jenkins stayed friends with the Cubans he had trained for the Bay of Pigs and at JMWAVE, and apparently continued working with them operationally, as they did in Nicaragua in the 1980s as part of Oliver North’s Network.

Wheaton: “Chi Chi was a shooter, he was trained by I.F. Harper…Jenkins was from Louisiana and was the CIA’s liaison with  Carlos Marcello, the mafia boss connected in with Sam Giancana and John Rosselli who are on the public record as being part of that crowd – the Mafia guys they say were connected to the Kennedy assassination. …I had been working with Sen. (Hugh) Scott (Rep. Pa.) to see if we could get the record set straight on the Kennedy assassination – get total immunity for those involved. I talked to Senator Scott about it and I told them if you guys just tell the whole straight story you can get immunity.”

THE STRAIGHT STORY 

Wheaton: “The straight story is that there was a CIA fronted program to assassinate Castro and Carl (Jenkins) was in charge of training the Cubans in Miami to assassinate Castro and it was paid for by the CIA. They would go from Texas down to Mexico and take some convertibles and things into the hills and rocky areas and set watermelons up in the back seat and they had what they called a triangulation shooting team. And they were according to THEM, THEY were the ones that diverted the Castro funds and training for their own agenda to snuff Kennedy. It was a paid element and they were CIA people. They were training to assassinate Castro, but if you are trained to assassinate one person, you can use that training to assassinate anybody with that same training. That’s what they were using – the paid training program to get Castro. The Cubans, because of the imprisonment of those guys and JFK backing off at the last moment in support of the Bay of Pigs invasion, they were still angry, still are to this day. There was another clique above them that was worried about Kennedy not increasing the program for escalating the hostilities in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. So at an extremely high level, I’m talking about the political elite level, the shakers and movers of the country – the top guys in the Pentagon and White House, did not want Kennedy to shut down that war because they were just getting it warmed up and wanted to escalate.”

“Chi Chi and Carl Jenkins were in charge of the main team.  Carl Jenkins was training Chi Chi (Quintero) and several other shooters, about five of them – and I.F. Harper helped train these guys to assassinate Castro. According to THEM, they just went off and decided to get their revenge on Kennedy for his failure to support the invasion of Cuba.”

“Lee Harvey Oswald was just a stooge that Carl and his friends…... Carl you see, back in the early 1950s, when he came back from Korea, he formed the first US Marine Corps Reserve unit in New Orleans. Carl was a Captain in the Marine Corps, and a CIA officer. He formed the first US Marine Corps reserve unit in New Orleans, La., and he was the CIA liaison between CIA Headquarters and Carlos Marcello, the organized crime boss there.”

“Lee Harvey Oswald was a young guy, and because of Carl’s connection with the US Marine Corps reserve, and his involvement in the CIA, helped recruit Lee Harvey Oswald while he was a Marines. Keep in mind this is not somebody sitting down and telling me this, this is over months and years of talking with them and them talking to each other in my presence. It was obvious Lee was a stooge that they set up. You always have what they call an 'Operational Security Plan' for deniability, - something that they put in the plan when they put the covert operation in place.”

In that 2005 interview Wheaton names a number of the Cubans, “Chi Chi” Quintero in particular, and “I.F.” Harper, who Wheaton identified as one of those who, like Jenkins, helped train the Cubans and Contras.

British schoolmaster John Simkin attempted to contact Rafael Quintero via his close friend Don Bohning, but Quintero refused to be interviewed though he did say that Gene Wheaton was telling the truth as "he knew it".

[https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKwheaton.htm]

His explanation of Wheaton's story was that he and Carl Jenkins had been lying to him when they said they were involved in the assassination. However, Quintero was quoted as saying: “If I were ever granted immunity, and compelled to testify about past actions, about Dallas and the Bay of Pigs, it would be the biggest scandal ever to rock the United States.”

Now Carl Elmer Jenkins has his own Wiki page:

Carl Elmer Jenkins a Central Intelligence Agency officer closely connected to several key figures behind the JFK assassination.

Background

Jenkins was born in Louisiana and joined the United States Marine Corps during World War II, becoming a commissioned officer in 1948.

CIA career

Jenkins joined the Agency in 1952.

Executive Action

For several years Jenkins was involved with Executive Action, a covert program for instigating regime change in Latin America, including mostly notably the government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzman in Guatemala. During this time he worked with William "Rip" Robertson and many figures implicated in the JFK assassination, including Tracy Barnes, E. Howard Hunt, David Atlee Phillips and David Sanchez Morales.

Bay of Pigs

On his return to the United States he joined Phillips and Morales in becoming part of Theodore Shackley's JMWAVE station in Miami, Florida. He is also frequently named in surviving documentation from the AMWORLD project (the CIA's codename for its role in the Kennedy administration's plans for overthrowing Fidel Castro).

In the summer of 1963 Jenkins worked closely with Morales in providing paramilitary training for Manuel Artime (MRR) and Rafael 'Chi Chi' Quintero. He also becomes Qunitero's handler.

Laos

Jenkins also worked with the Shackley organization in Laos, appointed Plans/Programs/Budget Management Officer in 1969 and served as Chief of Base from 1970 to 1973. Jenkins officially retired from the CIA in 1973 in Laos and moved to Malaysia for a couple of months followed by Australia. Eventually went to the U.S. after the dollar dropped in Australia.

Iran-Contra

Jenkins played a significant role in the covert efforts to resupply the Nicaraguan Contras in the mid-1980s, in circumvention of Congressional proscriptions, as led by Oliver North and Richard Secord.     

END WIKI

While Jenkins has his own Wiki page, John “ I. F.” Harper is more reclusive, and the only published reference I can find on him is in a Soldier of Fortune article. It would be hard to find a more colorful and elusive “legendary” character than “I.F.” Harper, whose only known mainstream published reference is a single line in a Soldier of Fortune magazine. 

[https://www.sofmag.com/]

I think the "I.F." is a nickname that stems from the Jewish Kentucky whiskey of the same name "I.F. Harper." 

And I call your attention to the fact that the first published reference to Operation Tilt – aka “The Bayo-Pawley Affair,” was in the very first issue of Soldier of Fortune (SOF), Volume One, Number One, an article and issue that is very rare and hard to get. (Brownie Points for any researcher who comes up with the Bayou-Pawley Article in an issue of SOF.)

That Harper – and Jenkins, and Quintero and some of the Cubans, continued their careers as covert operators after 11/22/63, helps confirm an assumption and the hypothesis that those responsible for the Deale Plaza operation had previously conducted similar missions in the past and continued to do them after Dallas. 

Among the covert ops that involved the Deale Plaza crew and the intelligence network that sponsored them are a number of well known events. Those involved in the JFK assassination – who knew the operational details, had previously worked together on Operation SUCCESS in Guatemala in 1954, the Bay of Pigs in 1961, and after Dallas, they went to the Congo, Dominican Republic, Southeast Asia and Central America and some were caught at Watergate. They were also involved in the Iran Contra affair in the 1980s in cooperation with Manuel Noriega in Panama and Ed Wilson’s outfit in Gadhafi’s Libya.

In the movie “The Shooter,” Levon Helm portrays an aging Amos Heacock, the USMC Vietnam sniper with over 100 kills to his credit. When asked about the Dealey Plaza snipers, he says that they are buried in the desert; having been killed shortly after the mission was completed, just like Oswald. 

In fact, those who participated in the Dealey Plaza operation – and kept their mouth shut, were not treated as “Expendable Agents” and liquidated, but just went on to other, similar missions, "wet" operations in other countries.

And those who kept their mouths shut, like Carl Jenkins and I.W. Harper, are remarkably, still alive today, though Gene Wheaton himself has died.

Wheaton died suspiciously on December 31 – New Years Eve, 2015, of a head injury, apparently an accident at his California home. 

After Jenkins and Harper were confirmed alive, and contact information obtained, Stu Wexler called Harper, but his family said he can’t talk over the phone for health reasons, but does email.

In a brief email exchange, when Wexler asked Harper about Wheaton, Harper called him: “A two-faced Son of a Bitch!.”

But he didn’t call him a liar, or contest the substance of what Wheaton had to say.

As Bill Turner put it, “the mechanism was in place” to kill Castro, and they just switched targets, and instead of shooting Castro they redirected their fire to JFK at Dealey Plaza.

Knowing that, we have now narrowed down the covert operational plans to kill Castro to a few – including Pathfinder that may have been the specific plan that was redirected to “snuff” JFK in Dallas. If it wasn't Pathfinder, it was one very much like it.

Now we will soon know the names of the shooters – the five first-class Cuban mechanic-snipers who were paid and trained by the CIA to kill Castro but one or two of whom shot JFK in the head instead.

Among the most recently released (2017) and long withheld JFK assassination records are thousands of pages and file after file of routine pay stubs for the Cubans who were paid by the CIA to fight Castro, some of whom were paid $100 a month, others $300-$500 a month – good money in those days. Watergate burglar Eugenio Martinez, a JMWAVE boat captain was paid an annual salary of over $8,000 a year to man the Rex and other CIA raider ships that were run out of JMWAVE. The names of the Cubans Wheaton gave us are among those files and pay stubs. 

“I took high powered rifles with scopes to Cuba,” Eugenio Martinez said, “and they weren’t going to be used to hunt rabbits.”

“Chi Chi” Quintero was a shooter, said Wheaton, who also names five or six other Cubans who were on that team, that maritime crew of anti-Castro Cuban commandos who were paid and trained to kill Castro. But when that mission was scrubbed – “disapproved” by “higher authority,” and they learned of the JFK- Castro backchannel negotiations at the UN (from Henry Cabot Lodge), they redirected the Pathfinder target to JFK at Dealey Plaza. And considered themselves patriots for doing so.

Larry Hancock is working intently on the files of the Cubans involved and he may release the results of his study at the JFK Lancer conference in Dallas this November.

Both Jenkins and Harper, will be invited to the CAPA "Last Living Witness" program at the Old Red Courthouse at Dealey Plaza, Dallas on Thursday, November 15, 2018, and given the opportunity to tell their stories and answer some of the outstanding questions. 

PATHFINDER – PART III - JOHN ROSSELI AND THE CIA-MAFIA PLOTS

Part III - http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2018/10/pathfinder-part-iii-john-rosselli-joker.html

[Note: There are various spellings of John Rosselli’s name, as it is not his original birth name, and for the most part I will use that spelling - the one he gave to the Church Committee in 1975]

The CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro were never revealed to the Warren Commissioner, which sparked Commission attorney Sam Stern to tell the HSCA that had the Commission learned of the CIA-Mafia conspiracies to assassinate Fidel Castro, “we would have gone much more into Cuba, the CIA, and the Mafia. We would have had a whole host of new avenues calling for investigation. And we would have obviously had to develop some new sources of information – other than the agency.”

The public and press didn’t learn about those plots until Jack Anderson revealed them years later, using John Rosselli as a source.

So far in this story is populated with characters named “Bishop,” and “Knight,” and some are said to be “pawns,” and in that spirit, to mix metaphors, Johnny Rosselli is the joker of the pack in this game.

Much has been written about Mafia boss John Rosselli, about his immigrant origins, rise in the mob, the Chicago outfit’s man in Las Vegas and Hollywood, movie producer, his love life and bizarre murder after testifying before the Church Committee. But I want to focus on one aspect of his life – his work for the CIA, his association with the anti-Castro Cubans in 1962-63, his covert operational activities at JMWAVE and his allegations regarding the assassination of President Kennedy.

Now they call them the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro, and it was Rosselli who first exposed those plots and added the Mafia part to the equation.

Rosselli has said that he first became involved in the CIA plots to kill Castro  during the Eisenhower administration, when he was approached by former FBI agent Robert Mahu in Las Vegas and introduced to James “Big Jim” O’Connell, his first CIA case officer, at the Brown Derby restaurant in Beverly Hills in September 1960. They discussed killing Castro, and Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana and Santo Traficante of Tampa were advised and brought into the picture, but they faded away after the early poison plots failed. 

With the ascendency of John Kennedy to the Presidency and following the Bay of Pigs in April of 1961, Jim O’Connell was replaced by William Harvey as Rosseli’s CIA case officer and the mechanism of death went from poison to high powered rifle.

William Harvey was brought in to run the CIA’s Cuban Task Force W from his previous posting as chief of the CIA West Berlin station, where he gained fame for the Berlin Tunnell escapade. And he brought some of his German people with him, including his secretary Maggie Crane, Ted Shackley and among others Karl, an “outside” man who dealt directly with the Cubans.

Harvey named the Cuban desk “Task Force W” – reputedly after William Walker, an early 19th Century American soldier-of-fortune, who among other things, took over Nicaragua and was executed by a firing squad of American soldiers. Task Force W, aka “The Tank,” was set up in a corner of the basement of CIA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. Those who worked there were ostensibly the puppet masters pulling the strings of the anti-Castro Cubans who were run out of the Miami, Florida JMWAVE station, then the largest CIA forward operating base (FOB) in the world. Harvey installed Maggie as secretary to Ted Shackley, who was named the JMWAVE chief of station (COS), and Harvey himself put in an appearance in Miami every few weeks though he usually worked out of the Task Force W offices at the CIA HQ in Langley.

William Harvey was part of the “Three Martini Lunch” crowd, along with James Jesus Angleton and Kim Philby, who Harvey unmasked as the Third Man in on the Cambridge spy scandal. They were occasionally joined by Maggie, whose husband was also in the CIA and was often stationed overseas. According to Bayard Stockton, Maggie “sat on the floor when she drank martinis, ‘so she wouldn’t fall off the carpet.’ Rita Chappiwicki succeeded Maggie. And then, in the Langley basement, it was Skip. The three knew all the secrets, but they never, ever betrayed Bill’s trust.”

According to Harvey’s official biography “Flawed Patriot – The Rise and Fall of CIA Legend Bill Harvey” by Bayard Stockton (Potomac Books, Washington D.C., 2006, p. 125), “By early Spring 1962 Task Force W’s headquarters staff was in place. Bill’s throne room during the fraught Cuban days was, of course, in the Langley basement, but his empire was in Miami, masquerading as Zenith Technical Enterprises on two thousand acres of CIA-leased property (on the University of Miami south campus).”

[NOTE: It should be pointed out that “Flawed Patriot” was vetted and approved by CIA, and the author, former CIA officer Bayard Stockson died before the book was published. ]

Stockton wrote: “…The stories about JMWAVE are legion. Among them is the tale of a visit by Robert Kennedy to JMWAVE – an incursion that in itself must have put Harvey into something south of a slow burn because CIA operating premises were off-limits to non-Agency personnel, regardless of rank or stature. As Kennedy roamed the building, he heard a telex machine chattering away. He ambled over to it, ripped the message out, and began to read it. Incensed beyond courtesy, Harvey, in turn, ripped the copy from the attorney general’s hands and thundered words to the effect that Kennedy was not cleared to read classified Agency correspondence. Both smoldered. The incident naturally became legendary and was symptomatic of relations between the two men.”

Ted Shackley told Stockton that, “(Harvey) came down to Miami ever four to six weeks, mostly to see Johnny Rosselli….”

As Stockton writes it, “Another popular JMWAVE story is the U-Haul truck deal. Writers like this one because, to them, it proves that the CIA and Harvey provided arsenals to the Mafia. The only known witness/participant to the event is Shackley.”

Shackley: “Bill came down with a list…four or five pages….of equipment he wanted. Nothing particularly out of the ordinary in that. We turned the list over to the JMWAVE warehouse manager, who loaded the stuff into watertight containers. All very standard procedure. I rented a truck through three or four cutouts and drove it into the JMWAVE compound. The stuff was manifested in and out. I drove the truck out of the compound and turned it over. Bill and I followed it to a parking lot in South Miami. The driver of the truck took a hike and caught a cab. Bill and I waited; maybe up to an hour….It was no different from any other odd request for equipment.”

According to Rosselli however, while Harvey approved of and made arrangements for the U-Haul truck load of arms, he recalls O’Connell as being with him on the hour long stakeout of a vacant lot behind a Cuban restaurant in Miami, and watched as Cuban #3 picked up the truck they watched as it was driven away. In his 1975 Church Committee testimony, Rosselli said Cuban #3, who he refused to name, often made runs to Cuba in his powerboat, sometimes depositing teams of commandos and assassins. The U-Haul arms cache, inventoried in a detailed manifest, included high powered rifles with scopes and ammo that Shackley says were packed by the JMWAVE warehouse man in waterproof containers so they could be easily and safely shipped to Cuba.

“During…. the climax of the Cuban Missile Crisis, it looked as if the United States was going to war,” writes Stockton, who quotes Shackley as saying: “American military teams were ready to be infiltrated ….pathfinders and people like that. I was to be in a plane with the airborne commander. The presumption was that the American military would pacify Cuba, and then J-2 – military government would take over. I guess I would probably have been Havana station chief…Then Bobby heard there was a commando team on the water, which he had not authorized, and he called them back.”

“American military teams were ready to be infiltrated….pathfinders and people like that…”

Yes, but these pathfinders weren’t US Army Rangers – who are also known as the “pathfinders,” who are the first to go into a battle, these pathfinders were Cubans, anti-Castro Cuban commandos trained by U.S. Army Rangers – specifically U.S. Ranger Captain Bradley Ayers and U.S. Ranger Captain Edward Roderick.

Both men were reassigned from the Rangers to the CIA by General Krulak to train the Cubans in basic covert operational fundamentals, small craft maneuvering, small arms, explosives and sniper shooting.

“Legendary” explosives and small arms trainer John “I.F.” Harper and US Marine Captain Carl Jenkins assisted Captain Roderick in training the Cuban teams at Point Mary in sniper tactics and “infiltration and exfiltration,” Jenkins’ specialty.

Jenkins trained small bands of Cubans to infiltrate Cuba before the Bay of Pigs, during Moongose and sent out but recalled during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and at JMWAVE in 1963.

ROSSELLI’S SUBBASE AT POINT MARY – OFF KEY LARGO

In a chapter of “Flawed Patriot” called “Rosselli’s Sub base in the Florida Keys,” Stockton writes; “The only description I have found of Rosselli’s paramilitary activities against Cuba comes from Richard Mahoney. Once Dick Helms personally cleared Rosselli for the assassination operation, the Mafioso was covered as a colonel in the Army and ‘Dave M.’ moved from the Langley basement to Florida. Toward the end of May 1962 the CIA built a small base for Rosselli’s unit on Point Mary, Key Largo, clearing out an acre or so of the thick mangrove forest for rough-hewn sheds and two crude structures. A floating dock was anchored on a coral reef. The purpose of the base was to train snipers.”

According to Stockton’s source Mahoney in his book “Sons and Brothers” (Arcade Pub., NY,  1999, pp.166-170), “Rosselli…was the only person who could make the incendiary (Dave) M. laugh. They would drink until the sun came up, usually joined by Rip Robertson, the hard-bitten Texan and decorated veteran of World War II who was the favorite ‘boom and bang’ guy among the exiled Cubans [because he had actually participated in the Bay of Pigs landing operation]. A favorite bar was Les Deux Violins where, according to one of the Cuban operatives, ‘Johnny knew all the help by their first name, tipped hugely, and would tell farcical stories about his days with Al Capone…..According to [a Cuban commander under Rosselli], Colonel Rosselli used the team from time to time for raids and other operations. Rosselli was one of only two Americans authorized to go into Cuba on clandestine missions.”

While the CIA files are suspiciously quiet about Rosselli’s activities at the JMWAVE station, former US Army Ranger Captain Bradley Ayers wrote extensively about it. While those who work for the CIA routinely sign non-disclosure forms that require them to run any manuscripts past them before publication, Ayers never signed such an agreement since he was US Army assigned to CIA for temporary duty.

Stockton’s footnote to these quotes also mentions that, “Mahoney quotes in part Bradley Earl Ayers, “The War That Never Was: An Insider’s Account of the CIA Covert Operations Against Cuba,” (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1976.) Ayers’ book is impossible to find there days. An interesting coincidence is that it was published by Bobbs-Merrill, for whom Harvey worked in Indianapolis until shortly before his death. I have heard one claim that Harvey actually edited the book, but I cannot confirm the story.”

An official CIA Public Affairs officer, in response to a media request as to whether or not Bradley Ayers “was ever a CIA agent,” wrote: “According to our records, he was never an Agency employee. As an Army officer, Mr. Ayers was detailed to work with the CIA from May of 1963 to December 1964. Because he never was an Agency employee – and, as such, never signed a pre-publication agreement with us – any suggestion that the CIA tried to censor or suppress his writings is incorrect.”

While the CIA didn’t vet “The War That Never Was,” it was edited by William Harvey himself, the attorney for Bobbs-Merrell, of Indianapolis, Indiana, primarily a school book publisher who reportedly maintained an office at the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas.

After I read Ayers’ book in the early 1970s, I immediately recognized its significance in regards to the assassination of President Kennedy, and later got know Brad Ayers through numerous long distance telephone conversations. I also got a copy of his second book on the subject, “The Zenith Secret – A CIA Insider Exposes The Secret War Against Castro And the Plot That Killed The Kennedy Brothers,” (Vox Pop, NY, May 2006), a very obscure publisher that was run out of Bronx storefront.

When I talked to Ayers on the phone he said that one of the items edited out of his first book was the name and role of Gordon Campbell, the head of Maritime activities at JMWAVE, who Bill Turner was the first to write about in his book “The Fish Is Red.”Ayers also said he was suing Vox Pop for breach of contract.

In his second book Ayers says that he first heard about “Colonel Rosselli” from his fellow Ranger Captain Ed Roderick, who worked out of the Point Mary base at Key Largo while Ayers trained his cadre of Cuban commandos at the Pirates Lair and Elliot Key, deeper in the Everglades.

In a motel room drinking Scotch, Ayers recalled that, “Rod described an interesting new guy, Colonel Rosselli from Washington with whom he was working in operations.”

Ayers says that Roderick “had been drinking before he got to the house that night…confided, he and the recently arrived Colonel Rosselli were working on plans to ambush Fidel Castro, and they had been on a weekend binge together. They’d become close friends as they spent time together; their drinking friendship was a natural extension of their on-duty relationship.”

“While we ate I discussed my training activities,” Ayers continued, “Rod began to tell me about the new things that were ‘in the air’ at the station….It seemed the administration was ready to begin making an even more concerted effort to unseat Castro…The Special Group had already removed a number of targets from the restricted list, and there were more to go. It was up to the CIA, specifically the Miami station, to plan the new missions, recruit and train exiles, and mount operations to strike the Communist dictator where it really hurt. Other espionage activities were being carried out to coincide with this paramilitary effort, and still more attempts to eliminate Castro were being developed.”

“Then he dropped it,” Ayers says. “He told me Rosselli had high level Mafia and Havana connections. I was speechless. The American government collaborated with organized crime? I couldn’t believe it. I was anxious to meet this guy.”

Just as the Big Con confidence men are either “Inside” or “Outside” guys, the JMWAVE operators were either “Inside” men who worked out of the “Zenith Technical Enterprises” official offices, while the “Outside” guys like Ayers, Roderick, Morales, Jenkins, Harper, et al. al. worked “in the field” and dealt directly with the Cubans.

Ayers worked in Training under the Maritime activities branch head Gordon Campbell, and occasionally had to report to HQ where he sometimes attended briefings of branch chiefs, including one in which he notes: “All the branch chiefs were there as well as Mr. (Desmond) Fitzgerald and Mr. (William) Harvey from Washington accompanied by Ted Shackley and Campbell. Dave Morales introduced Mr. (David Atlee) Phillips who was identified as a coordinator for the new initiatives with the exile political organizations. The briefings were far more interesting and revealing than I anticipated….”

“It was during the period of these briefings (summer of 1963), when I had reason to frequent the operations-branch offices in the building adjacent to mine, that I finally met Colonel Rosselli. While waiting for the briefing to begin, I would usually visit with Bob Wall or Rod (Roderick). One day I walked into Wall’s corner office to see him talking with a dark-haired, sharply dressed man. As I apologized for my intrusion, Wall introduced him as Colonel Rosselli, ostensibly a former Army field grade officer now in service with CIA as a paramilitary specialist. Rosselli greeted me warmly while at the same time eyeing me carefully. He had a charming manner, self-confident, polished, soft-spoken. Just for the hell of it, I threw out a hook and asked him if he’d ever serve with the 11th Airborne Division. He looked at me quizzically, then at Wall, and somewhat embarrassedly said he had not. Rosselli was a presence in and about the operations building for most of the week of briefings and I saw him frequently coming and going from Morales’ office. I also observed him consulting with Rod in the plans room and occasionally walking or driving around the JMWAVE complex with Gordon Campbell and Mr. Phillips, who obviously held a very important position somewhere in the CIA covert operation hierarchy.”

Ayers adds some light flavor to the story in describing the places he saw the Inside men socializing. In a footnote Ayers writes, “I observed Rosselli frequently when I had occasion to visit the operations or intelligence branches…I also saw him with Roderick, Morales, and a case officer by the name of Tom Klines lunching or having cocktails at the State Bar, (a favorite JMWAVE staff watering hole) on U.S.1, not far from the station, and at the Perrine New England Oyster House. I got the distinct impression Rosselli and Morales were quite close and Roderick confirmed this in conversations I had with him. By the middle of summer 1963, it was commonly known that Rosselli was a mobster hit man type hired by the agency to conduct covert operations designed to kill Castro. There was virtually no secret about this at JMWAVE. Following my introduction to Rosselli in Walls’ office, my contact with him was brief, casual, and cordial and did not involve operational matters.”

Besides the State Bar, Ayers also mentions some social occasions with JMWAVE personnel at the Black Caesar’s Forge, and the Green Turtle Inn. From April 13 to 21, 1963 Harvey and “John A. Wallston” – aka Rosselli resided at or ate and drank at the Plantation Yacht Harbor Motel, the Eden Roc and Fontainebleau Hotels in Miami. We know this because Harvey submitted the pay stubs for the CIA to pick up the tabs.

Among Harvey’s “Ops Expenses QJWIN/ZRRIFLE” are $26 for “drinks and dinner for 2” at the Eden Roc, $75 charter fishing boat fee, Islamorada, $200 for Eden Roc hotel rooms, and $1,000 for “ZRRIFLE/MI – No receipt.

RFK AT JMWAVE’S WALOOS GLADES HUNTING CAMP

Ayers says that the administration’s new covert initiatives against Castro and Cuba not only had the approval of the NSC Special Group, but Robert Kennedy the attorney general was brought into the mix personally, meeting with the JMWAVE Inside men at a cocktail mixer in a safe house adjacent to a golf course, and was flown by helicopter to one of the Everglade base camps where he was personally introduced to some of the Cuban commandos who were being trained there.

According to Ayers, he was sent to the “Waloos Glades Hunting Camp” where he observed two helicopters – a military Bell-13 with the tail numbers taped over, and a civilian chopper from the West Palm Beach air service parked next to two Quonset huts. While drinking coffee around a camp fire, “the door to one of the Quonsets sung open and four men emerged. As they moved into the circle of firelight I recognized Gordon Campbell. I had seen him only a few times since my briefing with him but had been impressed with his polished, slightly flamboyant executive manner. I caught my breath at the appearance of the second man. It was attorney general Robert Kennedy.”

“The four men talked in low voices for a few minutes, and then the attorney general came over and shook hands with each of us, wishing us good luck and God’s speed on our mission. Hell, I didn’t even know what my mission was. His white teeth sparkled, and I felt a strange sense of strength and resolve when he grasped my hand. Then he and one of the Cubans went to the civilian helicopter, and in minutes it took off. Now I understood the need for extra secrecy. If the president felt strongly enough to send his brother, something very big was being planned.”

“When the helicopter was gone, the deputy chief of station came over,…In a Quonset hut…illuminated by several Colman lanterns, …charts, maps, and other papers on a table in the center of the room, he said, ‘The reason we’ve got you here and the reason for all the secrecy is that we just got the green light from upstairs to go ahead on some missions we’ve been planning for some time….You’ll be happy to know that the Special Group has finally given us permission to use two-man submarines to strike Castro’s ships in the harbors. Some of your UDT people will be involved in that. And next week Rip’s (Robertson) boys are going to Eglin for parachute training, so an airborne commando raid may not be far off. But right now we’ve got the go-ahead to hit one of the major oil refineries from on the island. All we have to do is get a commando force in shape to do the job.”

THE TRAINING CAMPS

The men for these missions were trained at Point Mary, Elliott Key, Plantation Key and the remote Pirate’s Lair, that could only be reached by boat.

While Jenkins, Harper and Roderick worked with the Cubans at Point Mary, a remote area near Key Largo, Captain Bradley Ayers and Case Officer Porter Goss trained another team of Cubans at different locations deep in the Everglades. That team was led by Julio Fernandez, and partially financed - just as Rosselli supported his team at Point Mary, the Ayers/Fernandez team was backed by Clare Booth Luce, wife of the Life Magazine publisher.

Luce wrote a photo feature on her “Cuban Boys” in Life, and on the night of the assassination, she was awaken by a phone call from Julio Fernandez, who told her he had a recording of Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin, as well as photos and other items of evidence. Luce told Fernandez to call the FBI, but he wasn’t heard from again.

Bradley Ayers says that he trained his team of Cubans to attack an oil facility and docking terminal on the North Shore, while the Point Mary team were trained as snipers. That was the team that was being trained to carry out Pathfinder, the plan to kill Castro by shooting him with a high powered rifle as he rode in an open jeep. And it is the Cubans at Point Mary we are primarily concerned with as they are the most likely ones to have turned their guns on JFK in Dallas.

And it is the Point Mary team who became involved with John Rosseli.

On April 14, 1962 in Washington, D.C., Rosselli’s former case officer Jim O’Connell sat in on a Rosselli-Harvey meeting, after which O’Connell was reassigned to Okinawa and Harvey became Rosselli’s case officer and O’Connell went out of the picture.

According to Stockton, Rosselli’s official biographer, “On April 21, 1962, a year after the Bay of Pigs, Harvey and Roselli met at the Miami airport, and the Get Castro enterprise took on a new life. ‘The second phase [i.e., after Harvey took over] appears to lack the high-level gangster flavor that characterized the first phase,” - meaning Giancana and Trafficante were no longer consulted.

“Rosselli remained a prominent figure in the operation, but working directly with the Cuban exile community, directly on behalf of the CIA and directly under Harvey. In fact, immediately after he took over the ZRRIFLE portfolio, Harvey cut Giancana, and most especially, Trafficante out of the operation. It would be rational to assume, however, that Rosselli kept them informed, as a matter of Mob tact and diplomacy.”

“In an internal memorandum dated May 14, 1962,” writes Stockton, “Sheffield Edwards noted a phone call from Harvey, who said ‘that he was dropping any plans for the use of [Rosselli] for the future.’ The comment may have been an accurate indication of intent at the time, but it was not factually correct. Rather it was a conclusive, deliberately misleading signal, obscuring the fact that Bill was tucking the Rosselli/Get Castro operation into his vest-pocket.”

At that point Rosselli got a “crash course in intelligence trade craft, particularly the need for security and perhaps most especially the use of the telephone, counter-surveillance, the use of cutouts, recruitment requirements, and name checking – the usually boring but vital aspects of intelligence work. Most probably, as the circumstances permitted, the two men from worlds apart felt each other out, probed each others’ vulnerabilities and weaknesses – often over a bottle or two – and gradually formed the basis for an enduring partnership.”

Rosselli’s alias was “John Ralston” or “Colonel Ralston.” (also spelled John A. Wallston).

Two JMWAVE officers recalled that Rosselli, “…frequented JMWAVE…sometimes attending staff briefings, but more often engaging in demolition exercises with Ed Roderick, in rounds of cribbage, or heading off…for drinking bouts.”

“Dave M. was assigned to Johnny’s raiders to exert day-to-day control over a group of buccaneers who could have turned a messy situation into a disastrous one. It’s more than possible that the U-Haul resupply caper recalled by Shackley…was actually a resupply mission for Johnny’s ops base in the Keys.”

Sen. Mondale. When you were asked to help arrange for the assassination of Mr. Castro, what was your understanding of who In the United States government wanted you to do this?

Mr. Rosselli. Well, anybody in the U.S. government. My point was if I am recruited in the Army, and I was in the Second World War, it is like being recruited in the Army, and if it comes through from higher authority I don’t ask any questions how high it was as long as there were government people I was satisfied that I was doing a duty for my country. Testimony of John Roselli, 24, JUN 1975 157-10014-10001 – p. 62-63 of 97)

“Various accounts place Rosselli physically – sometimes in the uniform of a U.S. Army colonel – at the JMWAVE headquaraters….(but),” according to Stockton, “it is highly unlikely that Rosselli did, indeed come onto the base. Such a visit would have been a severe violation of basic security and would have been anathema to Harvey.”

“Once Dick Helms personally cleared Rosselli for the assassination operation, the mafioso was covered as a colonel in the U.S. Arm and Dave M. moved from the Langley basement (Task Force W) to Florida. Towards the end of May 1962 the CIA built a small base for Rosselli’s unit on Point Mary, Key Largo, clearing out an acre or so of the thick mangrove forest for rough-hewn sheds and two crude structures. A floating dock was anchored on coral reef. The purpose of the base was to train snipers.”

From the Rosselli Chronology File: “In Key Largo, Roselli was known as “Colonel,” training Cubans as fighters and earning Harvey’s admiration. On midnight missions, these exile soldiers reportedly traveled in twin powerboats to secret landing spots along the Cuban coastline to provide armaments to other anti-Castro conspirators. One JFK file includes a heroic account of Rosselli going along on some of these trips, once saving himself from a sinking boat riddled with bullets after being attacked by a Cuban patrol waiting in the shadows. According to another JFK file, Rosselli was gone for so long on one mission that Giancana worried that he had been killed.”

“Sometime in 1962, the CIA created a file called “Project Johnny” about Roselli’s heroics and kept it locked in a safe. Documents show this file was given a number — 667 270 — though years later it could not be found by congressional investigators, who mentioned looking for it to trace the actions of this mobster spy.” 

As the Cuban Missile Crisis was getting underway, in October 1962 Rosselli said that he talked to Harvey over the phone and Harvey instructed him to go to Florida where he stayed in contact with his Cuban friends for the duration of the Cuban missile crisis, and it was three JMWAVE maritime teams who were on their way to Cuba when they were sent on their way to Cuba by Harvey and Rosselli and then called back on orders of RFK.

Rosselli’s Chronology File reads: “During the Cuban missile crisis, Rosselli was in Chicago. He contacted (William) Harvey at Harvey’s mother’s home in Indianapolis and left his number in Chicago. Harvey then called him, told him to go to Washington, D.C. From Washington D.C., Rosselli traveled to Florida where he stayed for the duration of the Cuban missile crisis. He, at times, would, through his Cuban contacts, attempt to verify the location of the Russian missiles in Cuba. Rosselli claimed that this had been successful. After the Cuban missile crisis, Harvey called Rosselli and told him to stop all contacts with any and all persons involved in past Cuban missions. Harvey never stated why the missions were being called off.”

According to Rosselli, he met with Harvey in June, 1963, the last time they met officially in regards to the Cuban projects, though they remained close friends and social acquaintances. 

What became of the JMWAVE commandos after their plans were "disapproved by higher authority" and the missions they trained for were called off, both the Cuban Missile Crisis Pathfinders, and when the Pathfinder mission was officially “disapproved by higher authority”? 

The National Security Council’s Special Group (Augmented w/ RFK) was responsible for evaluating proposed covert intelligence operations against Cuba, and approving or disapproving them. Sometimes JFK would overrule a covert operation approved by the NSC SGA – such as the leaflet dropping mission.

A leaflet was prepared for release by airplanes over Cuba, and after it was approved by the NSC SGA, President Kennedy ran it past Robert Morrow, whose objections to it led to JFK withdrawing approval. Other covert ops, - such as one to destroy an oil refinery, was rescinded after the oil company objected, hoping to retrieve its Cuban assets in full operating order.

The three “Pathfinder” crews sent to Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis by William Harvey, were recalled in route by RFK, - the straw that broke Harvey’s back, as he was relieved as head of the Cuban Task Force W by RFK shortly thereafter, and posted to Rome, as Chief of Station by the CIA.

“Harvey’s removal from Task Force W at Bobby Kennedy’s behest was a watershed event for the CIA,” writes Stockton, “even though it may not have been recognized as such at the time.”

“From October 1962 on – after Helms and McCone replaced Harvey with Desmond FitzGerald, who was far more acceptable to the Kennedys as a person – the CIA was vulnerable to political manipulation. This became evident again in 1967, when (CIA Director Richard) Helms hastily called for the inspector general’s report, in anticipation of the fallout from Drew Pearson’s revelations...(about the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro).”

In Harvey’s place, Desmond FitzGerald was appointed the new head of Task Force W, the Cuban desk at the CIA, and it was FitzGerald who, on September 25, briefed the Joint Chiefs of Staff on CIA covert Cuban operations, especially the ones that were approved by the NSC SGA and required military assistance, that would be provided by General Krulak, whose aide, Colonel Higgins, wrote the memo minutes of that important meeting.

That the anti-Castro Cuban commandos, trained by Ayers, Roderick, Jenkins and Harper continued their – NSC SGA approved covert action missions against Cuba was readily apparent on November 1, 1963 when the New York Times ran a front page article about the CIA raider ship “The Rex,” and a photo of the ship docked at Palm Beach, Fla., not far from President Kennedy’s Southern White House home.

Castro had complained publicly on television, and the New York Times confirmed that the ship had deposited teams of commandos on a North Shore beach, some of whom were captured, with high powered rifles and scopes, and they were paraded on Cuban TV, and acknowledge that the CIA officially approved and supported and trained them. The CIA raider ship “Rex,” the New York Times reported, was leased to “Collins Radio” company of Richardson, Texas.

Collins Radio also made and serviced the radios for Air Force One, all of the executive aircraft as well as the Air Force Strategic Air Command bombers.  The company later merged with Rockwell International, to become Rockwell-Collins, a major defense contractor that hired Eugene Wheaton as a security consultant in the Middle East.

[Note: For some reason, even after the Collins Radio cover was blown by the New York Times in the Nov.1, 1963 cover story, the National Security Agency (NSA) used Collins Radio as a cover story for the construction of its new multi-million dollar headquarters in suburban Virginia, a transparent cover that was easily exposed when a security guard at the construction site was suspiciously murdered. It would be remiss for me not to mention the fact that Bradley Ayers and a former Havana Embassy officer were discredited in their photo identification of JMWAVE officers Gordon Campbell and David Morales at the scene of RFK’s murder, and Ayers recalls meeting with Campbell after an official death certificate was issued for him. Regardless of that, I believe what Ayers says about Rosselli at JMWAVE, as it rings true to what else we know.]

Both Bradley Ayers and Gene Wheaton are like flies on the wall, insiders who saw and heard those covert operators who were engaged in the secret operations that led to the murder of President Kennedy at Dealey Plaza.

On November 22, 1963, as news of the assassination spread around the world, it was early evening in Italy, where William Harvey was awaken from a drunken sleep by his aide (probably Mark Wyatt) and told of the murder, sparking him to mumble, “This was bound to happen, and it’s probably good that it did.” 

John Rosselli told the Church Committee Senators that he was in bed at the Desert Inn in Las Vegas, where he was awaken by a phone call from a Hollywood movie producer friend who told him about the assassination.

It was 1:30 pm in Washington D.C. where Desmond Fitzgerald and his associate Sam Halpern were sitting down to lunch at an exclusive and historic Georgetown Club when they were told of the assassination and left immediately. As they walked out, Halpern said, Fitzgerald thought out loud, wondering if his Cubans were involved.

That is something we should all be wondering now, over fifty years later. 

RESEARCH NOTES: Harvey/Shackley secretary Maggie Crane, Carl Jenkins and John I.F. Harper are all still alive. I have their contacts and will try to see if they will talk about Pathfinder. Support CAPA Research by joining or making a donation to CAPA at http:CAPA-US.org.

PART IV - THE PATHFINDERS AFTER HARVEY AND ROSSELLI -

Pathfinder 4 – AMLASH at Dealey Plaza

If John Rosselli is the Joker in the pack of rats that were responsible for the JMWAVE based covert intelligence operators who were behind the Dealey Plaza Operation, then Rolando Cubela is the other Joker.

David Atlee Phillips – the Ultimate Spook, was born on Halloween – October 31, 1922 in Fort Worth, Texas, as I note in my profile of him and his inside knowledge on the assassination of President Kennedy.

[ http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2010/10/david-atlee-phillips.html ]

When David Atlee Phillips died of cancer in 1988 he left behind an unpublished manuscript – “The AMLASH Legacy,” a novel about a CIA officer who lived in Mexico City, as he did when Lee Harvey Oswald was ostensibly there trying to get a visa to Cuba.

 In the novel Phillips writes: "I was one of those officers who handled Lee Harvey Oswald... We gave him the mission of killing Fidel Castro in Cuba... I don't know why he killed Kennedy. But I do know he used precisely the plan we had devised against Castro. Thus the CIA did not anticipate the president's assassination, but it was responsible for it. I share that guilt."

The title of the novel - “The AMLASH Legacy” stems from the CIA’s code word for Dr. Rolando Cubela, an original founder of the Student Revolutionary Directorate (DRE) at the University of Havana, originally established to fight dictator Batista and later redirected their efforts to oust Castro. Oswald was arrested after getting into a fight with DRE Cubans in New Orleans.

The Cubela-AMLASH Legacy weaves its way through the JFK assassination narrative like a needle through fabric, tying loose ends of threads together so we get a better picture of what really happened.

When Batista fled Havana on NewYear’s eve 1959, Castro was still fighting in the back woods while Cubela took over Batista’s office, sat at his desk and smoked his cigars. When Castro arrived in Havana days later, instead of taking over Batista’s office, he accepted an invitation from the manager of the Havana Hilton to use the penthouse of the new and lavishly furnished hotel.

The manager of the Havana Hilton was Lt. Col. Frank “Brandy” Brandstetter, officially an officer in the 488^th Dallas Army Reserve Intelligence unit, but he didn’t report to the unit’s founder and chief officer Jack Crichton, but instead reported directly to Colonel William Rose of ACSI. Rose worked out of the Pentagon for the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence (ACSI).

Brandy’s chief engineer at the Havana Hilton was Manolo Ray, the head of JURE, which became a major anti-Castro group that Sylvia Odio’s father was affiliated with.

Castro’s stay at the Havana Hilton Penthouse sets the scene for Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone program staring Peter Faulk (Columbo) as Castro who sees assassins in a mirror, and the assassins were after him. 

[  http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2017/08/rod-serling-and-jfk-assassination.html /   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mirror_%28The_Twilight_Zone%29  /  https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E71TheMirror ]         

When the CIA began their “detailed study” of the German military’s Valkyrie Plot to kill Hitler to be adapted for use against Castro, they found that most of the top level military leaders who became disenchanted with Castro had defected, and were no longer in a position to engage in an assassination plot and coup.

The Higgin’s Memo reports that by late September 1963 there were only about ten top level Cuban military officers who had been identified as being “disenchanted” with the Castro regime, but they were not “talking to each other.”

 [Higgins Memo:  https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10246 - relPageId=5&tab=page]

Cubela was there however, and the CIA recruited him, but when he announced he wanted to defect, the CIA talked him into staying there as a much more valuable “agent in place.” There were however, strong doubts about his loyalty to the CIA. Was he a double-agent and informing Castro of the CIA’s plans? 

As John Simkin’s Sparticus Encyclopedia on Cubela reads:

Rolando Cubela was born in Cuba. He trained as a doctor but as a student he became very involved in politics. A strong opponent of Fulgencio Batista, Cubela joined the Directo Revolucionario. In 1956 he assassinated Antonio Blanci Rico, the head of Batista's security forces. Cubela joined the rebellion led by Fidel Castro and was involved in capturing the Presidential Palace in Havana. At first, Cubela and the Directo Revolucionario refused to surrender the building to Che Guevara but eventually it was turned over to the new revolutionary government. Cubela was given the highest rank in the Cuban Army. Later he became an official in Castro's government and was leader of Cuba's International Federation of Students. In March 1961 Cubela approached the Central Intelligence Agency about defecting to the United States. He was persuaded to work for them as an uncover agent in Cuba. He was given the code name AMLASH and reported to JMWAVE.

As Simkin reports, “Joseph Langosch, of the CIA’s Special Affairs Staff, suspected that Cubela was a ‘dangle’ - a double agent recruited by Castro to penetrate the American plots against him. This idea was reinforced when Cubela refused to take a lie-detector test. In September, 1963, Cubela had a meeting with the CIA (Nestor Sanchez) in Sao Paulo, Brazil. It was suggested that Cubela should assassinate Fidel Castro, as he had previously killed Batista’s henchman. According to a CIA report Cubela asked for a meeting with Robert Kennedy: ‘for assurances of U.S. moral support for any activity Cubela under took in Cuba.’ This was not possible but the Chief of the Cuban Task Force (Desmond FitzGerald) agreed to meet Cubela. (The Chief of JMWAVE) Ted Shackley was opposed to the idea as he was now convinced that Cubela was a double-agent.”

The very next day after meeting with Nestor Sanchez in Brazil, Castro appeared unexpectedly at a reception at the Brazilian embassy, gave an impromptu speech and an exclusive interview with the Associated Press correspondent Dan Harker. 

Harker’s piece, “Castro Blasts Raids on Cuba,” was published two days later in the New Orleans Times-Picayune on September 9, 1963, which was apparently read by Lee Harvey Oswald, who was in residence there at the time. Those who blame Oswald alone for the murder of the President often site this news report as a spark that gave him the missing motive to kill JFK.

Harker quoted Castro as saying, “U.S. leaders should think that if they are aiding terrorist plans to eliminate Cuban leaders, they themselves will not be safe”.

 JFK had told numerous associates that when pressed to authorize the assassination of Castro, JFK commented: "If we get into that kind of thing, we'll all be targets."

The key points here are in the headline “Castro Blasts Raids on Cuba - Says US Leaders Imperiled by Aid to Rebels.” That clearly indicates Castro knew the CIA was behind the Cuban terrorists who were attacking industrial targets in Cuba. It also sends a clear message to the President that it isn’t a good idea to promote political assassinations, - a warning, not a threat. And giving this speech at the Brazilian embassy Castro sent a clear message to the CIA that he was aware of the CIA assassination intrigues against him, especially the meeting with Cubela the previous day in Brazil.

Harker’s AP report of his interview with Castro at the Brazilian embassy was published in the New Orleans newspaper and was ostensibly read by Lee Harvey Oswald. Articles about the CIA’s maritime commando raids on Cuba were published in the two communist magazines that Oswald subscribed to and are featured in the backyard “mission” photo Oswald had Marina take of him dressed in black with the rifle and pistol said to be used to kill President Kennedy and Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit. So Oswald, the accused assassin of President Kennedy, was well aware of these events and their significance.

As Simkin continues: “FitzGerald and Nestor Sanchez met Cubela met in Paris on 29th October, 1963. Cubela requested a "high-powered, silenced rifle with an effective range of hundreds of thousands of yards" in order to kill Fidel Castro. The CIA refused and instead insisted on Cubela used poison.

Cubela comes into the Pathfinder picture at this point, as Cubela reportedly had a seaside residence near Veradero that was considered for use by the CIA as a possible staging area or even a sniper’s nest for a sniper attack on Castro as he rode past in an open jeep on the way to Xandau, the Dupont estate he was known to frequent.

Veradero is a North Shore resort area, and near the ELINT - listening post where Soviet and Cuban technicians listened in to US radio transmissions, much like the US-Australian listening post in the Australian outback.

Former CIA officer Brian Latell, who adheres closely to the Dealey Plaza Operation cover-story that Castro was behind the conspiracy to kill Kennedy, wrote a book based primarily on the confessions of a Cuban defector who worked at the Soviet-Cuban listening facility. That defector claims that Castro himself instructed them to listen closely to the radio reports from Texas, where JFK was known to be campaigning. 

While Latell uses this as false evidence that Castro knew of the assassination in advance, actually that’s Latell’s faulty logic, as it is really only an indication that Castro knew JFK would be in Texas, not a state secret.

After Cubela requested a high powered rifle with a scope to shoot Castro, as the Pathfinder plan called for, at least two arms shipments were delivered to the North Shore near Veradero that included high powered rifles for Cubela to use.

On 22nd November, 1963, Sanchez met Cubela in Paris and gave him a fake pen/syringe that he could use to stab Castro. Cubela was told to use Black Leaf 40 (a deadly poison) to kill Castro. As Cubela was leaving the meeting, he was informed that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated.

At the same time, Desmond FitzGerald and Samuel Halpern were having lunch at an exclusive private club in Georgetown when word of the assassination reached them, and according to Halpern, FitzGerld wondered aloud if his Cuban operatives were involved. Something we should also wonder.

Both Nester Sanchez and “Chi Chi” Quintero were paid and trained by the CIA, were among those who were working on Cuban operations with FitzGerald, and are mentioned by Gene Wheaton as among the close associates of Carl Jenkins, all being involved in covert intelligence operations before the assassination of President Kennedy and afterwards.

Before the assassination they were involved in the Guatemala Coup of 1954, the Bay of Pigs in 1961, the JMWAVE maritime attacks on Cuba in 1963. After the assassination, they were together in the Congo, trying to checkmate Castro’s Cubans there before joining David Atlee Phillips and the US Marines LBJ sent into the Dominican Republic in 1964. After that they were in Vietnam, and twenty years after Dealey Plaza they were still working together in Nicaragua training the Contras to fight the Sandinistas.

In the aftermath of the assassination of the President, in 1964, they continued their association with Cubela, with “Chi Chi” Quintero traveling to Europe to meet with him personally. In Europe Quintero also met with Otto Skorzeny. Skorzeny was the former German military officer who promoted and directed Nazi covert operations. Skorzeny kidnapped the imprisoned Italian Prime Minster, who met with Hitler the day after he survived the Valkyrie plot to kill him. Skorzeny led the Valkyrie “Clean-Up Crew” who arrested and executed many of those who were involved in the Valkyrie conspiracy – some 3,000 souls.

Skorzeny also directed the units of the English speaking German soldiers, dressed as American soldiers, who infiltrated behind the lines ahead of the Nazi counter-attack that became known as the Battle of the Bulge. British Naval Intelligence Commander Ian Fleming, who directed his own covert commando unit, considered Skorzeny his opposite number in the German Army.

So in the months after JFK was killed, “Chi Chi” Quintero went to Europe where he met with Cubela about continuing the assassination plot against Castro, and with Skorzeny, the Nazi pioneer of covert commando operations who helped round up the Valkyrie co-conspirators.

The Valkyrie plan that the CIA studied to be used against Castro was the overall strategic plan that was utilized for the Dealey Plaza Operation, while Pathfinder was the tactical CIA plan to shoot Castro with a high powered rifle as he rode in an open jeep, using anti-Castro Cuban commandos paid for an trained by the CIA to kill Castro, that was redirected to JFK in Dallas.

PART V – Synopsis, Summary, Analysis, Conclusions and Areas for Continued Research

Pathfinder 5

JFKcountercoup: PATHFINDER at JMWAVE - 1 - 2 - 3

JFKcountercoup: Pathfinder at Dealey Plaza - Part 4 - AMLASH

Summary - Analysis – Conclusion – Areas for Continued Research –

“Facts are not the truth, - they only indicate where truth may lie.” – H.W. Barron (as quoted by Mary Bancroft in “Autobiography of a Spy.”)

I am now convinced more than ever, that we – and I emphasize WE are able to resolve the assassination of President Kennedy to a legal and moral certainty within the next few years, if only the effort is taken.

This can be said with near certainty for a number of reasons that I will elaborate on, but most significantly because of the combination of a number of events. 

For starters we now have the computer and internet at our disposal, as well as a number of knowledgeable, independent researchers and writers who are working together, and their research is complimenting each other’s work and is panning out.

We also have the law on our side – the JFK Act of 1992 that requires the government to provide us with all of the official records on the assassination, many of which are posted on the internet and available on line so you don't have to travel to the Archives to read them. 

In addition, the new House of Representatives, controlled by democrats, should hold open public hearings on the JFK Act to determine who destroyed relevant records, why so many official documents are missing and what became of them.

There is also a new Dallas County District Attorney who appears to be open minded enough to consider the murders of President Kennedy and J.D. Tippit unresolved cold case homicides that can still be solved.

THE GUM SHOE

Joshia “Tink” Thompson, author of Six Seconds in Dallas and Gumshoe, the latter being the story of his 20 years working as a San Francisco private eye in the best Sam Spade tradition. Thompson once said that in all of the thousands of cases he worked on, there came a point in time when a key piece of evidence was discovered that led to the resolution of the case, EXCEPT for the assassination of President Kennedy.

Well my research, after nearly fifty years, is finally panning out, and complimenting the work of my compatriots even though we are working on different subject areas and on different levels.

I find that after running down dead end alleys and banging my head against walls for decades, by backing off and approaching Dealey Plaza from an entirely different direction, it has made all the difference.

COVERT ACTION 

Rather than the spontaneous act of a deranged madman, or a conspiracy by a bunch of rich oil men, mafia goons and renegade CIA types, neither of which fit all of the known facts, we can now look at the assassination for what it was – a covert intelligence operation designed to deceive and provide plausible denial to the actual assassins and their sponsors.

It was a PLAN, not a PLOT. A covert action plan. A contingency plan that was put into action in Dallas. 

In the course of evaluating exactly what happened at Dealey Plaza, it is now clear that whatever you believe occurred it must be considered and classified as a covert intelligence operation.

One of the first hallmarks of any covert intelligence operation is secrecy, and every top secret plan is given a code name known only to those involved. 

When I first realized this I never believed we would ever really know what the  actual operators code named it, so I called it The Dealey Plaza Operation (DPO). But now we have Valkyrie and Plathfinder, two covert operational code names for covert plans that were designed to be used against Fidel Castro of Cuba but were re-directed to JFK at Dealey Plaza.

What happened in Dallas was a covert intelligence operational plan that was very close and similar to a number of CIA covert operations directed against Cuba – specifically the Valkyrie Plot to kill Hitler, that the CIA “studied in detail” in order to develop a plan to be used against Castro, and the Pathfinder plan, that was designed to shoot Castro with a high powered rifle as he drove by in an open jeep.

Valkyrie was the overall Strategic Plan to use deception to protect the assassins and take over the government, while Pathfinder was the Tactical Plan using snipers to kill Castro that was used to kill JFK. 

While Pathfinder was “disapproved by higher authority” (National Security Council Special Group Augumented, JFK and RFK), we have on good authority (a CIA case officer and his Cuban commandos) that the Pathfinder plan, or one very similar to it, was originally designed to kill Castro but redirected to JFK at Dealey Plaza. It was a well planned and expertly executed tactical operation that was part of an overall strategic plan based on the CIA’s detailed study of the German military’s plot to kill Hitler.

VALKYRIE

Valkyrie was the code name for the covert German military plan to kill Hitler and take over the German government that failed on July 20, 1944, when Hitler survived the bomb explosion in the Wolf’s Lair headquarters briefing room in Rastenburg.

That plot was “studied in detail” by the CIA to be used against Castro, but instead of using a bomb as the mechanism of death, snipers with high powered rifle were believed to be more efficient and certain, and was the strategy employed by those who re-directed the operation designed to kill Castro to kill President Kennedy in Dallas. 

We first learned about the Valkyrie plan from the Higgins memo of the CIA’s Desmond FitzGerald’s briefing if the Joint Chiefs of Staff on September 25, 1963, but we can suspect their “detailed study” of the Valkyrie plan was years in the making.

PATHFINDER

The U.S. Army Rangers are called Pathfinders, and two U.S. Army Ranger Captains - Bradley Ayers and Edward Roderick were assigned to the CIA by USMC General "Brut" Krulak to train the Cuban Commandos at JMWAVE. While Ayers trained the Cubans in small boat maneuvering at Pirate's Lair, Roderick trained the snipers at Point Mary, off Key Largo.

The original anti-Castro Cuban Pathfinders were the best of the lot sent to Guatemala to train for the Bay of Pigs, and were commanded by US Marine Captain Carl Jenkins, whose specialty was infiltration and exfiltration of commandos while John "I.F" Harper trained the Cubans in explosives and sniper tactics.

Some of the Cuban Pathfinders at the Bay of Pigs were captured, while some others (Felix Rodriguiz, "Chi Chi" Quintero) escaped and made their way back to Florida. There, they were rained at the remote JMWAVE bases for different missions that were proposed to the National Security Council for consideration.

William Harvey, head of Task Force W, that oversaw JMWAVE, was considered "America's James Bond," as he was introduced to President Kennedy in the Oval Office.

Harvey was the case officer for mobster John Rosselli, known as "Colonel Rawlston" around JMWAVE bases, as he was the consultant for "strategy" in the on-going plans developed to kill Fidel Castro and he helped finance and had Harvey supply weapons to the Cuban commando team trained there.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, in October 1962, Harvey anticipated a full fledged invasion of Cuba, as the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended, and sent in the Pathfinder teams. When RFK learned of this, he considered it an unauthorized mission and ordered the Pathfinders called back. So after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and being called back by RFK during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Pathfinder Cubans were none to happy to learn that the "Pathfinder" operation that they had been training for months - shooting Castro with a high powered rifle as he rode by in an open jeep - had been "Disapproved by higher authority," as the documents put it.

When Harvey was fired by RFK for sending in the Pathfinders, and sent to Italy as CIA Chief of Station, but continued his association with Rosselli.

William Harvey was replaced with Desmond FitzGerald, a Kennedy insider who convinced the Kennedys to approve the CIA covert operations against Cuba and Castro, including terrorist attacks against industrial targets, and personally handled the AMLASH (Cubela) project that included shooting Castro with a high powered rifle. FitzGerald also was the CIA officer responsible for covert operations against Cuba who briefed the Joint Chiefs of Staff on September 25, 1963, when he tells them about the CIA's "detailed study" of the July 20, 1944 plot to kill Hitler to use against Castro. Colonel Higgins, who wrote the memo, was the adjunct for Gen. Krulak, who was responsible for military support for CIA covert ops. 

We should have first learned of the Pathfinder plan in 1975, when eight technicians employed by the CIA’s National Photo Interpretation Center (NPIC) reported to their boss (Dino Brugioni) that they were involved with the Pathfinder plan at JMWAVE station in Florida, providing photos and maps of the target areas – DuPont’s Xandau estate in Varadaro, on the north shore of Cuba. But the CIA kept a lid on it by keeping the Pathfinder story from the Church Committee and miss-filing it a Frank Sturgis file. 

While the CIA seems to have lost or misplaced their “detailed study” of the Valkyrie plan, as well as any documented trace of Pathfinder, other than what the NPIC technicians told them – we can review the open source material on the July 20, 1944 event for ourselves and see how the CIA adapted it for use against Castro.

We also know a number of participants in the Valkyrie plan who survived and could have been used as sources for the CIA’s detailed study – including Allen Dulles, the OSS man in Swizerland, his assistant Mary Bancroft, and their co-conspirator in the heart of the plot – Hans Bernd Gisivious. Then there is Oswald’s friend Volkmar Schmidt, who brought up the subject of killing Hitler in his lengthly conversation with the accused assassin.

Now we have Otto Skorzeny, who was not a part of the Valkyrie conspiracy, but helped unravel it by rounding up some of the participates for prison or execution. From retired Air Force Maj. Ralph Ganis, who purchased the Skorzeny Papers at auction, we see the overlap of Sknorzeny’s intelligence network and those involved in the Dallas aspects of the assassination.

From the historical record of the plan to kill Hitler we can see some immediate parallels, including the assignment of a code names – Valkyrie – the Norse faries who fly above the battlefield and determine who lives and dies. And then there's Pathfinder - those who take the lead and escort those who come after them. They are also trained in calling in air strikes and as snipers, if a high profile target presents itself.

There are five specific aspects of the Valkyrie plan to kill Hitler that fit like a glove over the Dealey Plaza Operation. Besides the application of a code name, there's four other aspects of the Valkyrie Plan that were applied to the Dealey Plaza Operation. 

One important aspect of the Valkyrie plan and the Dealey Plaza Operation is getting the victim to sign off on and actually approve the plan. Hitler actually did this as it was presented to him as a contingency plan to put into effect in case of an emergency - such as if the millions of foreign slave labors in Berlin revolted, or the sudden death of the Fuher.

While the CIA presented the National Security Council Special Group and JFK with some twenty covert operational plans against Cuba a month, and only half were approved, they did approve some of the violent, terrorist attacks against Cuban industrial targets designed to hurt the Cuban economy. Some of these plans included the use of high powered rifles, that were smuggled into Cuba in arms shipments. 

A third common attribute between Valkrie and Dealey Plaza was the use of the Home Guard in Germany and the American equilvant – the National Guard or Army Reserves in Dallas. 

The CIA, by its charter, is prohibited from operating domestically within the United States, but not so the Army, and it was the Army National Guard who were called out in Mississippi, at Kent State, Memphis and Chicago during the Democratic National Convention, and it was the Army Reservists who were all over the place, boots on the ground in Dallas.

As many as half of the Dallas Police Special Services Unit were US Army Reserve officers as well. They were  led by Captain Pat Gannaway, US Army Reserves, and Deputy Chief George Lumkin, driver of the Pilot Car in the motorcade, were part of the Special Services Unit, which was headquartered not at City Hall with the rest of the department, but at the Dallas State Fairgrounds. This was the case so their undercover informants didn't have to be seen at City Hall, but also because the Fairgrounds is the location of Col. Jack Crichton's underground Emergency Communications bunker that could have intercepted the Secret Service channel of the motorcade and the Air Force One radio communications. 

And finally, a distinct part of the Valkyrie plan to kill Hitler that was to be adapted for use against Castro, and redirected to JFK at Dealey Plaza, was the deception part – to blame the assassination on communists. 

The only aspect of the Valkyrie plan that wasn’t used in Dallas was the mechanism of death, and instead of a bomb that failed, a high powered rifle with a well trained sniper was used instead.

With the Valkyrie plan used as a basic strategy, and the Pathfinder tactical plan to kill Castro with a high powered rifle as he drove by in an open jeep - it was a plan already in place that was pulled off the shelf at JMWAVE and activated, not to kill Castro but rather JFK.

So starting from the basic assumption that whatever happened at Dealey Plaza was a covert intelligence operation, studying other, similar and related covert intelligence operation, we can outline what emerges as a web of intrigue.

We can overlay the various intelligence networks involved to see a new mosaic, - one that will allow us to perceive in exquisite detail, exactly what happened, what was operational in Dallas at the time, who the participants were, how it was carried out, and what their motivations were.

While we continue to review the official records on the assassination, many of which are still being withheld, and many are missing – including the Valkyrie study and Pathfinder documents, we also recognize that the most significant records are NOT among the records in the JFK Collection at the National Archives and open to the public.

In fact, some of the most significant assassination records are in private hands – Richard Sprague’s House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) records are not in the Archives but were retained by him and are still in his hands.

We also can see that Mrs. Lincoln’s artifacts – including the Oval Office tape recordings of JFK’s meetings and phone conversations, were kept by her, inherited by a private individual, and sold, some privately and some at auction, but they are not open to the public at the National Archives, as they should be.

And now we have The Skorzeny Papers, thanks to Major Ralph Ganis, who recognized their significance, purchased them at auction, analyzed them and wrote about them in his book – with the subtitle – Evidence For the Plot to Kill JFK.  He details how Skorzeny’s post World War II network extended into Dallas and included many of the direct participants in the assassination. (I met Maj.. Ganis in Dallas and my review of his book The Skorzeny Papers will be posted soon, as well as the transcript of an extended radio interview with him). 

Since we now have most of the pieces to the Dealey Plaza puzzle, and can clearly view the covert intelligence networks that carried out the assassination, we have to ask ourselves what Daniel Ellesberg asks – what are we going to do about it?

As for room for further research, we will be filing new FOIA reqeusts for specific documents we know exist or did exist, try to track down the living witnesses, as we have with Carl Jenkins and John Harper, who we will try to get to talk about their experiences.

There are the eight NPIC techs who are named in the 1975 document, and an association of former NPIC employees and some of the eight may still be alive and could provide further info on Pathfinder. The ARRB should have gotten the CIA personal files of each of those eight NPIC employees, but didn't so we will have to file a FOIA request for them.

In addition, I am going to re-review Larry Hancock's 2018 Lancer presentation on the Wheaton Names, that is chock full of leads that need to be fully explored.

JFKCountercoup2: Larry Hancock on the Wheaton Names

I am also going to footnote the five part Pathfinder series and add photos and links to documents that I will post again when finished.

And now, what are we going to do about it?